North Carolina taxpayers aren’t getting much bang for their higher-education buck, according to a new report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
Despite consistently large increases in state and federal money for North Carolina’s public universities, the state lags nationally and regionally in its percentage of college graduates.
The report — the first in a series that also will examine higher education in Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Virginia, and Washington — challenges the conventional argument that big spending on university research in North Carolina has been an engine for widespread economic development.
The study, which uses data from the federal Department of Education, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other education sources, also alleges that some higher-spending universities have become “gated” institutions that use more money for bolstering the salaries of key faculty members than on improving instruction or access for lower-income students.
“It’s clear that the majority of students are not graduating college,” said Richard K. Vedder, the center’s director, and Andrew Gillen, its research director, in the report. “The students that do graduate are doing so with even greater debt loads, despite the increased subsidies from the state.”
Mr. Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and former member of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, formed the center two years ago. —Eric Kelderman