Utah students’ plan to hold tuition altered
The Utah Student Association’s, or USA’s, initial plan to freeze statewide tuition rates was altered in a compromise due to the Utah System of Higher Education’s potential need for an increase in tier one tuition.
After a meeting with the USA Friday, USUSA President Douglas Fiefia said they will “hold the line” on tier two tuition with the compromise that tier one tuition may be raised. The initiative was originally planned to freeze both tier one and tier two increases.
Tier one tuition is a state-mandated rate, whereas tier two tuition is decided at the university level.
The Utah System of Higher Education may request a two to three percent tier one tuition increase to improve universities, Fiefia said. Instead of working against university presidents, the association has compromised so universities can bring high quality faculty and staff to their campuses.
“We want to support them, actually, in this raise because many of us have seen, over the last few years, institution presidents (leave the state)… because they’ve been head hunted and are in different states serving as presidents of other universities,” Fiefia said. “So we definitely see the importance, so we want to support them.”
According to Melanie Heath, director of communications for USHE, there has not been a proposed tier one increase; the 2.5 percent increase is a consideration.
Fiefia said students can expect to see an increase in tuition next year, but said he hopes it will be less than it was last year, which was a 5.5 percent increase.
“Tuition is being raised every single year and it ranges from zero to ten percent, usually closer to five to ten percent.” he said. “This year it’s going to be a lot less. The win on our side is because we’ve got the presidents on board, because we’ve decided to compromise, instead of it having a huge impact, it’s only something that’s small because they’ve decided to work along side us.”
Tim Vitale, executive director of public relations and marketing at USU, said there was no tier two tuition increase for the year 2013-2014 and a 1.5 percent increase the year before. The Utah Statesman reported that there was an increase for the 2014-2015 school year.
“President Albrecht is working hard to minimize or eliminate any tier two increase at Utah State University, Vitale said. “He has always worked to keep intuition as low as possible and last year there was no increase in tier two tuition because the president realized that students are in a difficult situation…He’s very aware of student needs and the plight that they face and he’s constantly working hard to keep tuition as low as possible.”
Fiefia said he feels this is a great compromise, seeing that students will see a lesser increase than they would have otherwise.
“We definitely want to still push the message to the state legislature that they do need to hold the line and to continue to support and fund higher education, but also not to increase it on the back of students,” he said.
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