Elizabeth Stone mailed four tax forms this year. They were filled out neatly, put into four different white envelopes, and mailed to four different places: the federal government, and the state governments of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.

Katrina O’Hanlon has accumulated thousands of dollars in student loans, all in her name. They are waiting for her when she graduates, and have prevented her from taking full advantage of the academic opportunities that her university has to offer.

Alison Monroe receives financial aid, but it is not enough to offset her costs. She, too, has loans waiting to be paid. She works twelve hours a week as a desk receptionist, making the most of the work-study program she considers herself lucky to have received. She uses the money for textbooks and food.

These three girls have a lot in common. They are all juniors at UNC Wilmington. They all are a part of the University’s Honor’s College. And, most importantly, they are all out-of-state students.

Their status as members of the 16 percent minority of out-of-state students at UNCW has put them at a financial disadvantage to their peers. These disadvantages are not limited to steepening tuition costs, but dictate all financial decisions that these students make. Being out-of-state students has affected their university experience in many ways, and new legislation has indicated that this is not going to change any time soon.

Out-of-state students pay triple the tuition rate of in-state students. For the 2012-2013 school year, out-of-state students paid $18,301 for tuition and fees, while in-state students paid only $6,199. The UNCW Financial Aid website estimates that an out-of-state student’s total cost of attendance will exceed $30,000, while in-state students’ attendance will cost approximately $18,438. This financial strain has not yet been enough to drive out-of-state students away, but it is something that out-of-state students at UNCW are acutely aware of.

“I knew I wanted to go somewhere out-of-state because New York doesn’t have the best school system,” O’Hanlon said of her decision to enroll at UNCW. “And out of all the schools I applied to that were out-of-state, UNCW was still the cheapest, even though I got scholarships to all the other schools.”

Thirty-one percent of UNCW’s revenue for the fiscal year of 2011-2012 was generated in tuition; another 31 percent came from state appropriations. In-state students and their families fund the state appropriations through tax payments, which is then paid back to them by way of inexpensive tuition. As the revenue from appropriations from the state has steadily decreased, tuition is continually on the rise to compensate for the school’s costs of operation.

The adjustment leaves out-of-state students in the lurch to generate more revenue, and contributes to the steeper tuition hikes observed in the past few years. For the 2013-2014 school year, appropriations are being cut another 6 1/2 percent, leading to a $144.40 increase for in-state students, and a $178.32 increase for out-of-state students. For many, this is a big problem, for a variety of reasons.

“Despite the fact that I probably need it, I did not get any financial aid,” O’Hanlon said. “Instead, I was forced to put all my money in loans. I have thirty grand a year in loans, building lots and lots of interest. It’s keeping me from going to graduate school, because ideally I’d go right on, but I’m a little busy paying back my one hundred plus grand in loans.

O’Hanlon also finds herself being prevented from taking classes at UNCW due to the cost. “Once your reach 140 credits, they claim that they’re going to start charging you tuition in a half,” she said. “That means I would be paying $45,000 a year to go here. I’m very close to reaching that because of my AP credits, and I still can’t get a straight answer whether those go towards my 140. If they do, it’s like I’m being punished for working harder in high school. My advisor keeps telling me to take summer classes because those don’t count to the 140, but I cannot afford to pay $500-a-credit summer classes if I’m still paying thirty grand a year to go here.”

Being from out-of-state brings obstacles for students looking for employment, as well. “I was unable to get a job on-campus my freshman year, because the majority of jobs on-campus are geared only to students with work-study. I didn’t have a car, so I couldn’t work off-campus. Also, being in the Honor’s College and taking lots of labs, it’s not like I really had time. I was also trying to have a college experience and be in a club or two. Freshman year I did crew, which was really fun, but also was $200 a semester. Sophomore year, again, the same thing.”

Stone got a part-time job working in a fish market at home in Rhode Island her sophomore year, before leaving to study abroad in Spain. When she returned home, she worked as an intern on the Cape Cod National Seashore, and received a small stipend and a place to live. That summer she also worked part-time as a waitress. When she returned to UNCW, she became an Honor’s Mentor, a semester-long opportunity that paid $500. But now, all of those temporary employments are finished.

“I’m back to being unemployed, and I still don’t have work-study,” Stone said. “I have a car now, and can get off-campus, but as a junior taking 17 credits with three labs and a directed independent study, it’s not like I have all that much free time. It’s hard getting a job off-campus as an out-of-state student. I was able to get an internship for the summer which will pay well, but again, that lasts for ten weeks and I’m unemployed again for senior year.”

Their concerns are reflected on an administrative level. Vice Chancellor Charles Maimone is concerned that escalating budget cuts and pressures on the university to increase efficiency will lead to even greater consequences for out-of-state students.

“The governor has proposed a 12.7 percent increase in out-of-state tuition for six schools in the system who they believe have the demand to absorb that increase,” Maimone said. “This is one of those little mind teasers – they’re saying because you can generate that revenue from out-of-state tuition, we’re going to cut your state appropriations that same amount, on top of that 6 1/2 percent reduction.”

The question to be asked is whether or not out-of-state students such as O’Hanlon and Stone would still be drawn to UNCW if the cost of attendance were higher than their own in-state options. A 12.7 percent increase of the projected 2013-2014 tuition would be an extra $2,346.94, bringing out-of-state tuition to a hefty $20,826.75.

“Out-of-state students base their decision on a couple of different things,” Maimone said. “You base your decision on the in-state tuition for the state that you’re in, and the out-of-state tuition for the schools you’re interested in. And, you also make it based on comparing the out-of-state tuitions you’re interested in.”

Increases in tuition are only one way that funding cuts hurt the university. Students are often drawn to UNCW not only for the price, but also for the aesthetic of the campus.

“I wanted to do marine biology,” Monroe said. “There’s a very limited number of marine bio schools, and this is one of them. And it was my favorite. It’s really close to the beach. And when I went on the tour, it just seemed like a place I could see myself being.”

Maimone knows this is an incredibly important aspect of UNCW’s appeal. “What are the top five reasons that you came here?” he said. “It’s certainly going to be your academic program. It’s going to be your opportunities around research. It’s going to be the instructors. These are things that are critically important. But I’m sure when you step on campus and you look around, you say, yes, I want to be here. I like this place. That has its role in your decision. Well, the cost to keep the grass mowed and to make sure that the buildings are in good shape – you have this whole infrastructure issue.”

“One of the top three reasons to come to UNCW is place,” Maimone continued. “How nice it was to be on that campus, and how comfortable, and how safe people felt being on that campus. So when you talk about efficiencies, what are you possibly compromising by saying well, you don’t have to have that look, that clean of a classroom, those nice of residence halls. That’s probably all true, if all that your students were thinking about was this.”

Until these changes come into effect, out-of-state students will keep thinking about loans, juggling part-time jobs, and going to class, activities that they say have become more than a full-time occupation.