RALEIGH – A provision in the state House’s version of the state budget would eliminate the controversial tuition waiver program for graduates at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
Created during the 2003 budget negotiations, the tuition waiver gives NCSSM graduates free tuition if they choose to attend any school in the University of North Carolina system. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Guilford County Democrat, pushed the tuition waiver policy through the General Assembly in 2003, saying at the time that the tuition waiver was one of the best provisions in the budget because it would keep more of North Carolina’s brightest students in the state.
The House’s move to repeal the tuition waiver comes six months after an Inquiry paper published by the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy criticized the program as not providing any economic benefit to the state.
In that work, authors Shannon Blosser and George Leef showed that the tuition waiver is largely an award to students for something they would have done anyway. From 1998 to 2003, before the tuition waiver was enacted, 663 NCSSM graduates or 57 percent opted to attend a UNC system school. An additional 494 students enrolled either in one of the state’s private schools, or an out-of-state institution.
Blosser and Leef argued further that the tuition waiver has no economic impact on the state because there is no guarantee that the students would remain in North Carolina after graduation from college.
“In a fluid, national labor market, highly talented college graduates are apt to go where they find the best job,” Leef said. “Where they went to college won’t usually tie them to any particular state.”
The report also looked at evidence of declining academic standards at the school. Even though the school attracts many students with high SAT scores, school records suggest that grade inflation, falling average SAT scores and declining graduation requirements have marked NCSSM over the past several years.
In 1999, 43.5 percent of the final grades given were A’s compared to the Class of 2003 that received 52.9 percent A’s on their final grades. Faculty members who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that school administrators have told teachers to raise their grades and that the school wants grades that “colleges can look at.”
SAT scores have dropped 13 points in a two-year period from 2004 to 2002. The drop comes as other schools, including Raleigh Charter High, which has the state’s second highest average SAT score, have seen an increase in their SAT scores.
Graduation requirements were changed during the implementation of a trimester scheduling system that was criticized by many faculty members. The new system cuts the time that students actually spend in class and a student can skip a semester of math and still graduate.
If approved, he House’s provision would continue to award the tuition waiver to graduates through the end of the upcoming school year. Students who have already received a tuition waiver would continue to receive the funding while they are in a UNC school.
Shannon Blosser (sblosser@popecenter.org) is a staff writer with the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy in Chapel Hill.