Tuition to be raised again
The cost of a college education in Utah continues to climb as the State Board of Regents decided to increase tuition by 4.5 percent when they met last week in Orem to discuss the budget proposals of nine Utah public colleges.
The 4.5 percent Tier I Tuition increase is just the base of a statewide tuition increase which applies to all of Utah’s public colleges except for the Utah College of Applied Technology, whose fees are negotiated directly with the state legislature.
The final amount of the tuition increase will depend on the amount of Tier II Tuition that each institution decides to add on top of the Tier I Tuition. The amount of second-tier tuition is different for each institution and will be determined after the presidents of each school consult with their respective student bodies concerning the matter.
In his Sept. 11 budget request to the Board of Regents, Utah State University President Kermit L. Hall asked for an increase in financial aid funding for the students, in an attempt to counter the effects of the imminent tuition increase.
“The steady increase in regular tuition and the necessary use of Tier II Tuition have created a greater need for financial aid,” Hall said.
The Board of Regents lumped Hall’s request for extra financial aid into the “Additional Needs” category of their agenda, which received little attention at Friday’s meeting.
At the top of the agenda was the issue of increased salaries for college faculty and staff throughout the state, who haven’t received a raise in three years. This was also the issue which received top priority on Hall’s budget proposal to the board.
“We’re happy to see that the regents are championing our number one goal of salary compensation,” said John DeVilbiss, executive director of public relations and marketing at USU.
The Board of Regents originally decided to increase faculty and staff salaries by only 2.5 percent, but after some debate on the matter they upped this figure to 3 percent.
With this decision, the regents have asked that $12.6 million in state funds be set aside to give raises to college faculty and staff throughout the state. This seemingly large figure pales somewhat when it is taken into consideration that in his Sept. 11 budget proposal, Hall asked that $4.2 million be set aside to give raises to USU faculty and staff alone. The 3 percent increase will help, DeVilbiss said, but USU faculty and staff salaries will still remain below the national average at peer institutions.
The regents also decided to raise the money allocated to pay for the faculty and staff’s medical and dental insurance by 12 percent.
“This is good but not great,” DeVilbiss said.
In its budget proposal, the university had asked for a 14 to 16 percent increase in monies to cover these premiums.
The Board of Regents also discussed the issue of unfunded growth at Utah’s colleges and universities. According to the budget proposal, unfunded growth caused USU’s student-to-faculty ratio to rise to a record high of 25-to-1 and contributed to a six-year graduation rate of 57 percent.
“Those troubling numbers translate directly into how much personal attention we give each of our students,” Hall said.
To remedy this situation, Hall asked for $3.3 million in ongoing funds, to employ more faculty and staff. The Board of Regents decided to designate $10.9 million to be shared between nine Utah institutions to fund growth. Additional money needed to fund growth at the university will have to come from second-tier tuition.
Also on the meeting’s agenda was the issue of increased operation and maintenance funds. DeVilbiss said that many departments at USU have gone 14 years without receiving an increase in their operating budgets. Hall asked for $1 million in ongoing funds to help change this problem, but the board only allocated $2.8 million to be shared by the nine institutions for improved operating budgets. $11 million was set aside for fuel and power costs between the nine institutions. USU alone asked for $2 million to cover this year’s costs and $5 million to pay off debts incurred by insufficient fuel and power funds over the past few years.
In good news for USU, however, the regents approved a $40.7 million revenue bond for USU to construct a new student housing complex and parking terrace west of the Taggart Student Center, between the Alumni House and the LDS Institute building.
All decisions made by the Board of Regents must still be approved by the state legislature before becoming official.
Although the university didn’t receive all of the funding requested in the Sept. 11 budget proposal, the financial situation hasn’t necessarily deteriorated, DeVilbiss said.
“We haven’t lost any ground, but we haven’t gained any either,” he said.
The decisions made by the Board of Regents will now go to the Higher Education Appropriation Committee, who will organize these decisions into a formal request to be presented before the state legislature during its 2004 session. The legislature’s final decisions will be announced by the first week of March.
-sjeppesen@cc.usu.edu