House Committee Backs Bill Boosting College Transparency | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: The author of this post is Kari Travis, who is an associate editor for the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.

State agency would publish information about tuition, graduation rates, student loan debt, employment records of North Carolina campuses

    RALEIGH - A House committee on Tuesday approved a bill that would require the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority to inform college applicants about the possible outcomes of a degree at any of the state's public or private colleges and universities.


Sen. Chad Barefoot, R-Wake, speaks before the House Committee on Education-Universities about a proposal that would provide employment and salary information to prospective undergraduates prior to their enrollment in a North Carolina college or university. (CJ Photo by Kari Travis)

    Senate Bill 536, "Students Know Before You Go & Central Residency," stipulates that the NCSEAA must provide the following information to prospective undergraduate students.

• Completion rates within the expected number of semesters for the degree sought.
• Transfer rates of students to other institutions.
• Percentage of students receiving financial aid, by type of aid.
• Average and median amount of loan debt upon student graduation, by major.
• Average and median salary, by major.
• Percentage of graduates employed within six months of graduation, by major.
• Percentage of graduates enrolled in graduate school within six months of graduation, by major.

    "Next to buying a house, a person's college education is probably the second most expensive thing that they will purchase," Sen. Chad Barefoot, R-Wake, the bill's primary sponsor, said Tuesday before a meeting of the House Committee on Education-Universities. "We have ... great institutions, both public and private, in North Carolina, and we just want to make sure that our students and their parents - while they're applying for financial aid - have good information on the degree programs that they are seeking from those institutions."

    The information would be made available to college applicants through an NCSEAA website, where data about the state's projected employment needs and salary ranges also would be published. All data would be pulled from the U.S. Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    In addition to these measures, the bill also includes provisions that would streamline the state's process for confirming a student's in-state public tuition and scholarship qualifications. Under current law, individual University of North Carolina institutions are responsible for determining if an applicant qualifies as a state resident, and is eligible for special financial assistance. Under the proposed new rules, the NCSEAA, with input from the UNC system, the North Carolina Community College System, and North Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities, would be responsible for verifying an applicant's status as a resident and tuition qualifications.

    S.B. 536, which passed the Senate in April of last year, now will be sent to the House floor for a June 15 vote.

    To read more news about higher education and the impact of student fees on tuition rates at public universities in North Carolina, click here.