A member of the UNC system's governing board wants to explore whether international students should pay more for a public college education in North Carolina than American students from other states do.

Charging a higher tuition rate for foreign students would bolster revenue for a public university system that could use every dime these days. Bill Daughtridge, a former state representative now serving on the UNC system's Board of Governors, thinks international students should pay more because they pay neither state nor federal taxes in the United States.

"We're subsidizing them even more," said Daughtridge, who is from Rocky Mount. "I'd see it as equity in what people pay."

Daughtridge hasn't proposed a specific foreign student tuition plan, but he has asked staff from UNC President Erskine Bowles' office to examine the issue further. Hannah Gage, who heads the governing board, said the issue will probably be considered in coming months.

Each public campus charges a different rate for out-of-state tuition, and the rates for undergraduate and graduate students vary. Here's one example of how a higher foreign student tuition charge might work:

Last fall, UNC Chapel Hill enrolled 332 undergraduates from other nations. If that number held steady this fall and each foreign student, hypothetically, paid $1,000 more than the $23,430 that UNC Chapel Hill currently charges its out-of-state undergrads, the university would receive an additional $332,000 in tuition revenue.

Overall, international students make up just a fraction of the UNC system's more than 220,000 students. In 2009, there were fewer than 4,200 international students enrolled at public universities, mostly in graduate programs, according to UNC system data.

Last year, N.C. State University enrolled 2,765 international students, the most by far among public campuses. NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson said he doesn't follow Daughtridge's reasoning. The chief federal subsidy to higher education is financial aid, which foreign students cannot receive, Woodson said.

And though the pool is small, the international students who come to American universities tend to be very talented and make positive contributions, Woodson said. Creating an additional roadblock would be "counterintuitive," he said.

But Daughtridge isn't convinced of that payoff and wants hard data on how many international students stay in North Carolina and contribute to the work force after receiving their educations.

"Do they stay in the country, or do they go back to where they come from and say, 'I just got a bargain education'?" Daughtridge said. "We don't know."

Universities don't keep that sort of data specific to international students, said Robert Locke, UNCChapel Hill's director of international student and scholar services.

But he points to a report from the National Association of International Educators showing that foreign students attending public and private institutions across the state contributed nearly $240 million in tuition and fees to the state's economy in 2008-09.

More than that, Locke argues, the presence of international students on the state's campuses provides learning experiences for the homegrown as well. That's particularly important as students prepare for an increasingly global workforce, he said.

"It's a way to get exposure to people from other countries," Locke said. "It's really about the education of North Carolinians. (A higher tuition rate) would only mean you have fewer international students coming in, because there is competition for them. It doesn't sound like a good idea to me."