North Carolina has long been among the states that are most generous with their support for higher education. Generous state support, of course, means a large burden for the taxpayers. Do they get their money’s worth?
In today’s Martin Center article, Ashlynn Warta dives into the data on spending per school. Her key finding: “The fact that most of the UNC-System schools receive much larger appropriations than their peers raises an important question: Why do they need so much more money? As previously noted, students are not more expensive to educate in the UNC System than at peer schools, yet the UNC System consistently receives much larger state appropriations than its peer institutions.”
Evidently, “peer” schools in states with lower levels of government support manage to do their jobs more efficiently — just as one would expect. Big governmental funding reduces the incentives to control costs.
Warta concludes, “Students don’t need extravagant housing or athletic buildings; they need a high-quality education offered at an affordable price. With student enrollment dropping, universities’ priorities need to be set correctly. Students also don’t need the burden of mountainous debt before even entering the workforce. Perhaps the UNC System has room to aid its students by lowering tuition further. And if nothing else, it could aid the state’s taxpayers by making it a little easier to comprehend the fruits of our taxpayer dollars.”