Huntsman signs law letting universities set residency reqs
Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr. signed a bill into law Tuesday that will allow universities to choose their own requirements for granting students residency, clearing the way for USU to grant residency to students after one year of living in Utah.
House Bill 118 repealed the previous standard that required a student to complete 60 credit hours or live in Utah for three continuous years before applying for Utah residency and the cheaper in-state tuition that comes with it. Now universities have been given a window in which they may choose to allow students to declare residency at any time between one and three continuous years of living in Utah.
Lee Burke, the assistant to the president for government relations, said the bill is important to USU and other border schools because of the potential to attract students from neighboring states.
“We have people who live in Preston (Idaho), part of Cache Valley, who shop in Utah, some of the parents work in Utah, pay taxes in Utah, and they’re nonresidents. We think this is more fair,” Burke said.
Burke said the residency standard had formerly been one year until 2002 when House Bill 331 stiffened the requirement to three years or 60 credit hours.
Burke said that change meant nonresidents had to pay two additional years of out-of-state tution, which is about 3 1/2 times higher than resident tuition. That spike, combined with the simultaneous transition of Ricks College to the four-year university BYU Idaho, created a noticeable drop in enrollment from out-of-state students.
“They thought they were going to get this big bunch of money. That didn’t happen, because we lost students,” Burke said.
Jack Draxler, the North Logan representative who sponsored HB 118, said recognizing those “unintended consequences” was what prompted him to propose the new legislation. He said the bill met more opposition than he expected because the University of Utah wanted to keep the more stringent residency requirements, which led to the provision that allows universities to choose. The bill also originally would have permitted children and grandchildren of residents to get resident tuition, but that provision was dropped due to opposition.
“We maybe could have gotten that through, but it wasn’t worth risking the one-year provision,” Draxler said.
Craig Whyte, the recruitment specialist in the Admissions Office who deals with out-of-state students, said he hopes the new law will encourage nonresident students to come back to USU.
“The interest has always remained the same. Students want to be here,” Whyte said. “I think as soon as it becomes law and is advertised and is in the paper, we’re going to have a huge flood. We’re hoping.”
Though USU officials express optimism that the bill will attract nonresidents back to the university, many things remain unclear about exactly how the new requirements can be implemented. The bill is ambiguous regarding the necessity and requirements surrounding a student’s independence from parents, as well as about whether the new residency requirements will be retroactive or only apply to new students.
“It doesn’t spell it out,” Burke said. “The trouble is, if you made it retroactive to students who are already here, can you imagine the loss of tuition? I would think that the loss of revenue you would have would be tremendous.
“I would really like to get that resolved. It’s a very critical question,” Burke said.
Draxler said even though he sponsored it, he’s not even sure whether the law will apply retroactively to nonresident students who are already at USU.
“I’m not (sure), frankly, because when you propose a bill, it’s written by the Office of Legislative Research. What I intended in the bill was to give institutions a certain amount of leeway in how they interpret that,” Draxler said. “A certain amount of leeway means a certain amount of ambiguity, you see?”
The full implications of that ambiguity are still to be determined. Draxler said the issue will be discussed with the Office of Legislative Research to determine “what their take is on that.”
Director of Admissions Jenn Putnam said the university will be forming a committee as soon as possible to address the questions surrounding the mechanics of the law in order to allow students to plan accordingly should it be necessary for them to live in Logan for the summer in order to register for residency. The law will go into effect July 1.
“The sooner we can get it out before the end of the semester, the better,” Putnam said. “The administration recognizes that this is a very important question for students.”
Putnam said because a change of residency is a voluntary change of status, students will still be required to go through the old application process to meet other requirements such as getting a Utah driver’s license, registering to vote and relinquishing their residency of another state.
“It can be a pretty daunting task to do an application for residency. It’s not as clear cut as people think,” Putnam said.
Still, Putnam said the potential that the change will encourage nonresident students to enroll at USU again is significant. She said there have already been aggressive recruiting programs put in place, and USU intends to extend recruiting beyond neighboring regions. She said as long as the university can bring in more students, the losses that may be incurred as a result of lower tuition will be extinguished by the increase in overall enrollment.
“If we bring in enough new students, yes, the math does work,” Putnam said.