It’s past time for North Carolina to sit down and have a serious conversation with itself about the future of publicly funded higher education.

The University of North Carolina system in recent years has turned more and more to tuition increases and made tough spending cuts in an effort to keep higher education affordable and top-notch.

At the same time, the N.C. General Assembly has had to make difficult choices and budget cuts to the UNC system (as well as public schools, community colleges and other education efforts).

The UNC system is trying to educate more students with fewer resources, even as talented professors and other educators are wooed by colleges and universities outside the system.

Students and their families, meanwhile, are finding the costs of a four-year education to be higher than ever. They are taking longer to graduate because of rising costs, and when they do graduate, they carry heavier burdens of debt with them into the workplace for longer periods of their adult lives.

The UNC system beckons like a shining jewel to outside companies looking to locate in a state with a well educated workforce. But the continuing wrestling match between legislators, educators, students and their families over the prospects of earning a college degree threatens to undermine UNC’s long-held status.

The General Assembly’s budget challenges from nearly every public sector won’t go away any time soon. Neither will the state’s constitutional obligation to provide a higher education as affordably as possible.

All the more reason for legislators, educators and North Carolina residents to sit down now and look for new ways to continue the state’s proud leadership in such an important part of North Carolina’s future.

The state can ill afford to let this important resource continue to fade.