The future of NC Promise will depend on evidence that the program is working. Recent articles from from The Assembly and the Chronicle of Higher Education discuss this question and NCEFI research on the NC Promise with Daniel Klasik, Assistant Professor and NCEFI partner.
So far, Klasik said, NC Promise has not led to an increase in first-year enrollment at the three founding universities. But it has led to a significant jump in transfer students. “It seems like they’re opening an attractive and affordable path to a four-year degree for students who started at community colleges,” he said.
And even though first-year enrollment didn’t change much, the composition of those students might have changed, Klasik said. He’s curious whether NC Promise is leading to growth in Pell-eligible students or students from different geographic regions, for instance. While most students attend college close to home, he’s wondering whether lower tuition is prompting students to go to colleges that are farther away.
“When you change tuition so dramatically for a certain subset of colleges, that changes students’ thinking about how they decide where they want to enroll,” Klasik said. Making tuition cheaper will likely encourage students to move toward those campuses. But how will that affect the state’s other universities and community colleges?