Looks like the administration is going to raise our tuition and fees again this year. Surprise, surprise.

But the Board of Governors just approved something that will keep the administration in check, as well as help lessen the shock and loosen the impact on your wallet — a 6.5-percent cap on tuition and fees.

It’s nice to know someone’s looking out for us.

This allows students to better balance the demand for tuition and how they’re going to pay for it, something a good portion of our student body really needs.

Thousands of students at this University come from middle-class families. Their families make too much money to qualify for need-based grants, but still can’t afford to pay for everything out-of-pocket. And full-ride scholarships typically go to students with high testing scores, which can be demographically linked to above-average family incomes in most cases.

Families suffer each time tuition gets bumped up, and tuition has been steadily increasing for years. Universities are pricing out their students and families are getting caught off-guard.

Ten years ago, the annual price for in-state tuition and fees was $1,386, according to University Planning and Analysis. In-state tuition and fees for this semester alone is more than $2,000. Yikes.

We don’t want to sound like we miss the good ol’ days when soda pops were a nickel and the schoolhouse was uphill, both ways, in the snow. But these tuition hikes create an issue of retention, which Jim Phillips, chair of the BOG, said will be solved because the cap creates a predictability factor.

Now, families and students will be able to prepare for the stiff bill, knowing how much money to save or request ahead of time for the next four years.

We’re not saying this is the ideal situation, but it is a fact that the administration will keep raising tuition. This is a small way that we can have our cake and eat it too … even though this cake is pretty expensive.

Erskine Bowles, UNC-system president, has been in office since the year began and he has done something few top dogs remember to pencil into their schedules — he has kept the students’ best interests at heart.

North Carolina’s constitution demands that tuition for its public colleges and universities be “as free as practicable.”

We sure as heck know by now that it isn’t free, and it might not be practicable for it to be free, but the cap makes it more practical for families.