A recent report from one of four “chancellor initiative working groups” calls for adding 5,000 more undergraduates at UNC Chapel Hill over the next 10 years, split half and half between in- and out-of-state students.
The groups were formed earlier this year when Lee Roberts was the interim replacement for former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, who is now president of Michigan State University. The reports shed light on the thinking of campus leaders; the report listed 15 members, including three trustees and 12 administrators or professors.
After becoming the permanent chancellor, Roberts noted “The state is growing very rapidly, as we all know. Carolina has not grown very much. Only 3.5% of state high school graduates wind up at the university, he said.
Chapel Hill enrolled 20,681 undergraduates in the fall of 2023, which ranked fourth in the UNC System. N.C. State ranked first with 27,323, while UNC Charlotte and East Carolina held down the second and third slots. UNC Charlotte said today it enrolled nearly 24,900 undergraduates this fall.
The Enrollment Planning Working Group also urges relaxing the 18% cap on out-of-state admissions. That would help North Carolina win the battle for talent and be smart financially because out-of-staters pay much higher tuition than in-state students.
“However, adding an equal number of residents and non-residents significantly increases revenue by a cumulative $327 million,” the report notes. “The additional funding from non-resident students will enable us to continue freezing tuition for resident undergraduate students and keep their education as free as practicable … without increasing the financial burden on North Carolina taxpayers.”
Working group members favor adding to UNC Chapel Hill’s graduate-student enrollment, but on a program-by-program basis and in keeping with “workforce and market demand, academic quality and financial sustainability.” They proposed no specific numerical target.
Adding students will mean investing “in sufficient faculty” and support services, upgrading and maximizing the use of existing classrooms and labs, and building more on-campus housing and dining, the report says.
The report rejected the idea of using online programs, noting that most students want a traditional Carolina experience.
Another working group looked at the possibility of adding an engineering school to Chapel Hill’s academic programs. The engineering report says that expansion would help the university and entire state by expanding engineering-school slots for high school graduates.
It reckons that there are first-year seats in existing engineering programs across the state for about 4,052 North Carolinians. Assuming that 11% of high school graduates are interested in the field, there’s a potential demand for about 11,772 seats.
As a result, many high school graduates opt to go out of state to study engineering, even as engineering-program enrollment at NC State, UNC Charlotte and N.C. A&T State University have shown rapid growth in the past 15 years.
Chapel Hill could add an engineering school without cannibalizing those existing programs, particularly given that the state ranks 32nd nationally for the percentage of bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering.
The group urged expanding existing programs like computer science, biomechanical engineering (a joint offering with NC State) and applied physical sciences. It also suggests studying new programs in such fields as environmental engineering, materials science, polymer processing and computational medicine.
House Speaker Tim Moore has pushed fellow lawmakers to consider adding an engineering school at his alma mater. He is now running for Congress. The House’s proposed budget revisions for fiscal 2024-25 include an $8 million earmark to cover startup costs for a “College of Applied Science and Technology” at Chapel Hill.
(A version of this story appeared in the North Carolina Tribune, a sister publicaiton of Business North Carolina.)
