No, being opposed to tuition hikes does not make us selfish twentysomethings. And here’s why.
If you read this article you’ll see that North Carolina spends a great deal of money are higher education. We are third or fourth in the country in per capita higher education spending. UNC receives $12,366 in state and local funding per full-time student. So, if UNC-CH wants to feast on the funds of taxpayers, they have an obligation to keep tuition low. And by low, I mean not charging unnecessary fees such as the $50 athletic fee that will go to renovate Carmichael gym. That fee is simply putting a burden on students that they should not have to bear.
Furthermore, being a welfare university means not burdening students when you waste money on so many things–a Sexuality Studies department, black cultural center, contruction of buildings that undergraduates will never step in, and an ever growing legion of administrators.
However, if UNC wishes to privatize, go ahead. We need less institutions on the public dime. But until that happens, ever increasing tuition and fees are just another pot of funds for administrators to waste.
UNC is essentially living a lie. There commercials state they are the “University of the people,” yet it is getting to the point that only the rich or the very poor (via gov. subsidies), really benefit at all from the university. For instance, to a Football or basketball game at Carolina costs an small fortune, and to play golf at Finley golf course costs a large fortune. In regards to education, students are seeing their tuition perpetually increase because UNC desires to have the prestige an ambiance of an Ivy League institution.UNC needs to decide whether it really is or even desires to be the “university of the people,” or if it should just end this farce and admit it desires to be on par with the elite private institutions.
Well put