RALEIGH – At this time of fiscal austerity in Raleigh, with Gov. Beverly Perdue and Republican leaders of the General Assembly scrambling to close a $3 billion budget deficit for the coming fiscal year, lobbyists and advocates for North Carolina’s community colleges and university system are reminding lawmakers that the state constitution requires taxpayers to provide a large annual subsidy to these governmental institutions of higher learning.

They are absolutely right.

The requirement can be found in Article IX, Section 9 of the state constitution: “The General Assembly shall provide that the benefits of the University of North Carolina and other public institutions of higher education, as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.”

Now, if one were inclined to be argumentative, one might observe that the section doesn’t specifically refer to students or tuition rates. It refers to “benefits” received by “the people of the State.” One possible reading of the passage is that the General Assembly is required to keep cost of higher education as low as possible to the taxpaying public, who are among the beneficiaries of the existence of the colleges and universities.

But while such an interpretation may be logically defensible, it is not valid. If you study the history of the provision’s insertion in the constitution, the intent was clearly to ensure that North Carolina students attending public colleges not have to bear the brunt of the cost. Whether you agree with it or not, the provision is a constitutional requirement that the colleges be subsidized.

However, those seeking to defend UNC and community colleges from budget cuts or tuition increases seem to have their own slanted reading of the provision. They ignore the critical phrase “as far as practicable.” You can’t understand or apply the provision without those four words.

North Carolina’s public colleges and universities have never been “free.” Students have always covered some of the cost of their education through tuition, fees, and charges. Just as one can’t reasonably interpret the state constitution as requiring in-state students to pay the full cost, on the grounds that “the people of the State” refers to taxpayers rather than students, one can’t reasonably interpret the state constitution as forbidding the imposition of any tuition, fees, and charges that students and their families may find burdensome. That wasn’t the intent of the framers, either.

So what distribution of the financial responsibility for North Carolina higher education is “practicable”?

According to the most recent information from legislative staff, tuition and fees currently make up about 15 percent of the total revenues to the UNC system and about 18 percent of revenues to the state’s community colleges. If you exclude the hospital system and other ancillary businesses from the UNC totals, the share accounted for by tuition rises to just over 20 percent.

Despite a long history of tuition increases, these proportions are not radically different than they have been in the recent past. As tuition has risen, so have college and university expenditures. Apparently, past legislatures and governors have considered it practicable for students to pay around a fifth of the cost of running the institutions – with taxpayers, donors, and other sources covering the rest of the bill.

If this distribution was deemed practicable during times of state fiscal health, it’s hard to see how it could be considered impracticable – and thus unconstitutional – to shift a bit more of the cost to the users of the system during times of state fiscal deficit.

For example, even if lawmakers raised average tuition by as much as 30 percent this year, that would still leave taxpayers, donors, and other sources bearing nearly three-quarters of the total cost of running the institutions. You may think such a tuition hike to be unwise, but that doesn’t make it unconstitutional.

I submit that as long as a large majority of public college and university expenses is subsidized, lawmakers are respecting the state constitution’s provision – including the phrase “as far as practicable.” It would be grossly impracticable to interpret the constitution any other way.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.