The University of North Carolina Wilmington will raise tuition to help offset a $3.7 million state budget cut this year. Undergraduate tuition for in-state students will rise by $411.50 to $3,028.50 this academic year, which begins next month.

“UNCW remains one of the least expensive institutions among our peers, even with this tuition increase. The tuition increase at UNCW will be the second lowest among the UNC campuses,” said UNCW Chancellor Rosemary DePaolo in a press release. UNC Pembroke raised its tuition the least amount among the state universities by $250 to $2,423 for in-state undergraduates.

The two most costly universities- UNC Chapel Hill ($4,815) and NC State ($4,853) - increased their tuition by $750, the maximum amount authorized.

The General Assembly limited the tuition increase to an amount equivalent to the size of each university’s budget reductions for this fiscal year.

The 16 educational institutions that comprise the University of North Carolina system took a cumulative $70 million budget cut. Because state appropriations and tuition are the main sources for funding undergraduate instruction, the tuition increase enables UNCW to forego eliminating 23 staff and 15 faculty positions, UNCW officials said.

This tuition hike comes on top of an increase of $52 approved by the UNC Board of Governors in February.

The universities are required to set aside 20 percent of the revenues generated from the tuition increase for financial aid. UNCW will use the remaining revenues for academic-related needs, such as increasing or maintaining critical faculty positions in highly demanded courses, maintaining academic resources including the university libraries and replacing outdated computers and equipment for labs and classrooms.

“Our classes, programs, research and outreach initiatives are profoundly important to North Carolina and to the thousands of students we educate each day. They deserve the very best opportunities we can give them, and to do that, we must have adequate funding,” DePaolo said.

Secured state funding for UNCW

In this past legislative session, UNCW secured $1.6 million of state funding for the new Nursing Building and the new oyster hatchery called the Shellfish Research Hatchery at the Center for Marine Science.

“The reality is that our situation could have been a lot worse,” DePaolo said. “At one point we thought that we might not receive funding to be able to open our new Nursing Building and Shellfish Research Hatchery on schedule.”

The university also secured about $3.4 million in new state funding for its projected enrollment growth.

Undergraduate in-state tuition 2010-2011
NC State University        $ 4,853
UNC-Chapel Hill        $ 4,815
UNC School of the Arts    $ 4,307
UNC-Greensboro        $ 3,243
UNC-Charlotte        $ 3,044
UNC-Wilmington        $ 3,028.50
Appalachian State University    $ 2,960.74
East Carolina University    $ 2,881
Western Carolina University    $ 2,815.80
NC Central University    $ 2,812
UNC-Asheville        $ 2,626
NC A&T State University    $ 2,621
UNC-Pembroke        $ 2,423
Winston-Salem State Univ.    $ 2,274
Elizabeth City State Univ.    $ 2,204.28
Fayetteville State University    $ 2,129

Source: University of North Carolina website