First Posted: 2/10/2012

CHAPEL HILL (AP) — As scores of angry students held a raucous protest, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors voted Friday to increase tuition across the system of 16 university campuses by an average of nearly 9 percent, or over $400.

About eight students read statements before the vote in the call-and-response “mic check” style adopted from the Occupy Wall Street protests, while dozens more chanted and drummed outside the meeting room. The students scolded the board after the vote in the same call-and-response style.

“This is a sad day … for public education … and for democracy. We the students … wish the board of governors … had acted with courage … and upheld the North Carolina Constitution,” they said. The state constitution says attending a UNC school should be free “as far as practicable.”

A former university student demonstrating outside the meeting room was arrested. Robert Payne, 33, of Raleigh was charged with resisting and obstructing police and second-degree trespass, university police spokesman Randy Young said.

“They didn’t think about the feelings and the cost to the students and how that’s going to reflect on us,” said Lewis Dandridge, 24, a senior majoring in education at Elizabeth City State University. He said he drove the three hours to Chapel Hill before dawn to demonstrate against cuts that would hurt his younger brother.

The protesters’ outpouring of anger was the most significant involvement of students in nearly a decade, UNC Board of Governors Chairwoman Hannah Gage said.

The protest tapped an Occupy movement theme, that comfortable Americans who control important institutions too often make decisions that worsen the economic prospects of people who earn less. Tuition has been increased for four straight years and there’s no guarantee there won’t be more hikes, Gage said.

UNC System President Tom Ross recommended the cost increases as a stop-gap measure to lessen the impact of layoffs and class reductions forced by state budget cuts of $414 million last year. The cost increases will make up just 17 percent of the cut by state legislators, the public university system’s president said.

Gage said the tuition increase doesn’t fill the budget hole, but “does build a short bridge over troubled waters.”

“It’s never going to be a popular vote, but I think we have done our work and I think we have made an informed decision,” he added.

About 70 demonstrators blocked traffic as they marched the mile between the center of the UNC-Chapel Hill campus and the university system’s administration office. They carried signs proclaiming “education is a right” and “student power.”

Appalachian State University student Justin Hall, 26, of Eden said more increases will deny higher education to many students. While many of his costs are covered from serving in the Air Force for six years, his younger sister is struggling to stay in school, he said.

“I don’t think anyone should have to join the military to afford a free education. My sister right now is working a job, slaving away just to make ends meet. It shouldn’t be like that,” said Hall, a senior studying sustainable development.

But Ross said the increases are well below what campus leaders earlier said they needed. The reduced state funding forced the 16 university campuses and the School of Science and Math in Durham to drop more than 3,000 positions, and to cut library hours and course offerings.

The increases sought to balance higher costs for students and their parents against the threat that the deteriorating quality of a UNC education would harm not just the institutions, but the economic value of a diploma and the state’s competitiveness, Ross said.

“The key is to intervene and stop a decline from happening,” Ross said. “We want that diploma to have meaning and value when they go and seek a job.”

The undergraduate North Carolina resident student currently pays an average tuition and fees of $5,294 a year, not including books and living expenses. It is higher at the system’s two flagship schools, with UNC-Chapel Hill students paying $6,823 and North Carolina State University charging $6,964. Average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges in the U.S. rose 8 percent this year to $8,244 for in-state students, according to the College Board.

With the board’s vote, those bills will increase by varying amounts across the system. Costs will go up by 4.3 percent, or $199, next year at UNC-Pembroke, while at the high end, costs would rise by 9.9 percent at UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Asheville, Winston-Salem State University, Western Carolina University, and the UNC School of the Arts. That means tuition increases ranging from $447 at WSSU to $676 at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Friday’s vote also would increase tuition by another 4.2 percent on average for the 2013-14 academic year, though Fayetteville State University students would see no further increase.

Out-of-state undergraduate students can expect an increase next fall averaging 5.2 percent, raising their bill by $923 to $17,995. Campuses are generally limited to admitting no more than 18 percent of a freshman class’ students from outside North Carolina.

Students and families across the country have been paying a growing share of higher education costs for two decades, with tuition increases offsetting reduced state funding and investment returns from endowments through 2009, according to the Delta Cost Project, a Washington research organization that studies university spending patterns and productivity.

That’s changing as states make deep cuts in public higher education to cope with severe budget gaps, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, which represents colleges in Washington.

“The biggest consideration in determining the tuition increase they will face are the decisions that state legislatures make about providing operating support for those schools,” Hartle said. “States have to fund prisons, they have to fund Medicaid and elementary and secondary education.”

The North Carolina schools remain a bargain compared to other states, Hartle said. The University of Virginia charged new in-state students $11,794 for the 2011-12 academic year, while Penn State University charges underclassmen $15,100, Hartle said.