Sometimes you get what you pay for. And sometimes you get a bit more. That seems to be the explanation for UNC-Chapel Hill's designation, once again this year, as Kiplinger.com's Best Value in Public Colleges.
Kiplinger's concludes that UNC-Chapel Hill's combination of academic quality and relative affordability is tops in U.S. public higher education (N.C. State University, also commendably, ranks 10th). According to Kiplinger's, at UNC-Chapel Hill - which it terms "an academic superstar that competes with the Ivies" - the annual in-state cost for students with financial need "comes to a dirt-cheap $5,912." (The figure represents tuition, room and board and fees after taking financial aid into account.)
Whether or not any college can be considered dirt-cheap is open to question. But what's indisputable is that strong support from the state and its taxpayers enables Chapel Hill to offer high quality at a relatively low cost to those students who gain admission (about 32 percent of those who apply). And here's a heartening statistic: Almost one-fifth of the admitted students are the first in their families to attend college.
