Utah college students can expect to pay about 10 percent more in tuition next year as lawmakers continue a long-standing trend of transferring the cost of higher education from the state onto students and their families.
University of Utah trustees on Tuesday approved a "second-tier" tuition hike of between 7.5 and 9.5 percent, with the final figure contingent on how deeply the Legislature cuts higher education spending once the session ends Thursday. Southern Utah University administrators, meanwhile, will propose a hike of between 10 and 15 percent at the Cedar City school's "truth in tuition" hearing on Thursday.
Although tuition at Utah schools has doubled over the past decade, increasing at two to three times the rate of inflation, a year at the state's flagship school costs about 70 percent of what big state research universities charge, according to U. finance director Paul Brinkman.
David Pershing, the U.'s vice president for academic affairs, told trustees the school is "walking a tight rope between keeping the university affordable and maintaining quality. We are a low-tuition university and we need to stay that way."
While still a major mouthful, this year's proposed increase is "easier to swallow" for students because they see trustees and state Regents fighting to preserve state funding, said U. student president Tayler Clough.
"The institutions are doing a good job to ensure measurable benefits for students," said student Regent Jeff Kinsel, a broadcast major at SUU. "We have to recognize with any tuition raise, no matter what it's used for, there will be students who are not going to be able to make it."
Lawmakers this session have urged institution presidents to keep tuition increases below the double-digit threshold, while steeling them for state appropriations cuts as deep as 22 percent.
"This a short-term fix. We should be supporting students and give them an incentive," Kinsel said. "It's inseparable, the success of students and the success of the state. At some point we have to come up with an ongoing solution on how to fund higher ed in Utah."
U. and SUU officials said they hope to keep their total tuition hikes below 10 percent and 12 percent, respectively, but so much rides on where the Board of Regents sets "first-tier" tuition, the portion of an annual hike that covers compensation increases and is applied to all nine of the state's public institutions. The Regents will set that tuition at their next meeting, April 1. Because few higher education employees got raises this year or will get them next year, the first-tier increase is expected to be no more than 2 percent.
Meanwhile, Weber State trustees have proposed a second-tier increase of from 4 to 8 percent, and Utah Valley University is considering a jump of 6 to 10 percent.
Should SUU adopt the upper end of its proposed hike, which would raise tuition by $560, the resulting annual cost of attending school there would be around $4,850. That price would keep SUU far below its peer schools, small-city public liberal-arts college of fewer than 10,000 students.
SUU is refining its role as the state's only such institution, and administrators are the first to acknowledge it is a more expensive instructional model, where full professors teach small classes in a bucolic setting with plenty of cultural amenities. The school markets heavily along the Wasatch Front, promoting its private-school atmosphere on billboards and buses.
"This is part of a three-year strategy to get our tuition more in line with our peer institutions, like Southern Oregon University and Sonoma State, schools that charge double or triple what we do," said SUU President Michael Benson said. "We respect what other [Utah] schools do, but we're going in a different direction."
College and university trustees traditionally propose tuition changes at their March meetings, but funding uncertainties have left administrators with only moving targets this year. With legislative leadership now signaling a 14 percent reduction from the 2008-09 base budget, U. officials suspect their hit will be $15 million next year.
"I never thought I'd ever say a 14 percent cut would be good news," Pershing said. "It's a lot better than we thought it might be."
Along with the tuition increase, U. trustees also approved a $57.32 increase in fees, more than half of which will cover athletics. Students can weigh in at a March 17 "truth in tuition" hearing.
