UNC chancellor provides more details about free tuition offer. Here’s how it will work

UNC-Chapel Hill expects between 150 and 200 students to benefit each year from a new initiative by the university to offer some North Carolina students free tuition, and the university will use private money to fund the effort, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said Wednesday.

Guskiewicz provided additional details about the program to the UNC System Board of Governors during a committee meeting Wednesday morning, about two weeks after he first announced the initiative in a campus message responding to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down UNC’s race-conscious admissions policy.

The initiative will cover the cost of tuition and required fees for North Carolina undergraduate students from families with incomes of less than $80,000, starting with incoming students in 2024. The university also said it would increase outreach efforts to students in “under-resourced” parts of the state by hiring additional members for its admissions team.

Increased financial support and outreach efforts have been cited by experts as some of several strategies selective universities might use to continue to attract diverse students in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, which ruled the consideration of race as a factor in admissions unconstitutional.

The proposal had raised questions among Board of Governors members, many of whom said Wednesday they had not been informed of the announcement ahead of time and found out about it in the media. The initiative did not require approval from the system board, nor the university’s board of trustees, because it will not use state-appropriated funds, according to a document on the effort provided to board members Wednesday.

“It may be within your authority, but this was a big announcement,” board chair Randy Ramsey said. “I think just a little common courtesy would go a long way.”

Some members also criticized the proximity of the announcement to the Supreme Court’s decision. Board member Philip Byers said the timing could make it look like the university “is trying to use their authority and power to say, ‘Look at us, we can overcome even the Supreme Court of the United States.’”

Guskiewicz spent about 30 minutes fielding questions and some criticism from members regarding the rollout and details of the initiative.

“Admittedly, we were excited about this and excited about the opportunity to announce it to our campus community, including many who have worked tirelessly to make those opportunities a reality for our students,” Guskiewicz said in his opening remarks. “Our communication of the rollout could have and should have been better. For that, I’m sorry.”

Program will cover ‘last dollar’ for students who qualify

Guskiewicz said the students who benefit from the new initiative will be in addition to the nearly 5,000 students whose tuition and fees are already covered by existing programs at the university, such as the Carolina Covenant. That program offers students the opportunity to graduate from the university debt-free if they are from families whose income is at or below 200% of the federal poverty level — $30,000 for a family of four in 2023.

The effort will cost between $500,000 and $600,000 per year. The university will cover the cost of the program using private funds raised during its recent five-year capital campaign that, according to the campaign’s website, garnered more than $1 billion for scholarships and fellowships.

“Supporting this offer is fairly inexpensive because it builds upon decades of commitment that now make it possible to cover costs for all families in this income group,” Guskiewicz said.

To benefit from the new initiative, students will need to be admitted to the university and qualify for need-based federal financial aid based on information they provide in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

About 3,600 students at the university qualify under the family income limit of $80,000, with many already receiving aid in some form, Guskiewicz said. The university has almost 20,000 undergraduate students.

Through the new effort, the university will cover the costs of tuition and required fees that are not covered by a student’s financial aid or other grants and scholarships — amounting to the university paying “the last dollar” a student needs to receive free tuition, Guskiewicz said. The program will not replace the Carolina Covenant or other programs, including the Blue Sky Scholars program for middle-income students, but will help students who do not qualify for those programs.

The university will not waive tuition for students as part of the effort, Guskiewicz said, noting the university doesn’t have the authority to do so.

Students will be able to receive the aid for up to eight semesters, or four academic years, of their undergraduate education.

The university lists tuition for in-state students enrolled full-time at the university in the 2023-2024 academic year as $7,020 per year. Fees amount to almost $2,000 per year.

Board member Reginald Holley praised the university’s effort.

“I applaud the commitment of my alma mater to provide this tuition opportunity to as many of our state citizens as may need it,” Holley said, “because tuition should never, ever be a barrier to our citizens enjoying the benefits of constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina.”

Addressing UNC’s proposed outreach efforts

Regarding the university’s additional effort to increase outreach in underserved areas of the state, Guskiewicz said the university will have outreach officers work in a region covering 27 counties of the state, from Gaston County to Craven County.

The locations were selected based on existing partnerships through the Carolina College Advising Corps, which places recent UNC graduates in North Carolina high schools as college advisers, and with local community colleges. The university also “relied on data from the North Carolina Department of Instruction, which classifies counties based on a variety of factors, including school resources and the number of college-bound students in their communities,” Guskiewicz said.

Students from the 27 counties who apply to the university and may have received outreach from an adviser will be evaluated in the same pool as all other applicants and will not have their application flagged in any way, Guskiewicz said in a response to board member Art Pope. The effort “is just about building a more robust applicant pool,” Guskiewicz said.

Byers, of Forest City in Rutherford County, urged the chancellor and university to expand the outreach effort’s reach farther west into the mountains.

Guskiewicz said the university hopes to expand the effort to all 100 counties in the state, and told Byers his team would “go back to the drawing board, work on this and try to build something out” for the western part of the state.

Ramsey criticized the outreach effort, noting that the university already recruits far more students than it can admit. The university admitted less than 17% of more than 57,000 applicants for last fall’s first-year class. Guskiewicz said the university does not intend to increase enrollment as part of the new initiative.

“It seems a little odd to me that we’re gonna go and recruit more people that will likely be turned down,” Ramsey said.

Guskiewicz said the initiative is intended to give students and families across the state “the confidence that they can apply to one of the great universities in our UNC System.”