Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

U. Texas students will face 9.6 percent tuition increase beginning August
By Meghan Young
Daily Texan (U. Texas)
05/10/2006

(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas students can expect a 9.6 percent increase in tuition in the fall, followed by a 1.2 percent increase for the 2007-2008 school year.

The University of Texas System Board of Regents approved these increases during their March meeting, along with increases for the other 13 student institutions. This is the first time the regents have set tuition for multiple years. Since tuition was deregulated in 2003, the regents have set tuition on an annual basis.

UT System Chancellor Mark Yudof cited increasing enrollment and decreased state appropriations as the main reasons for tuition increases.

"This is essentially the problem that we face, and it doesn't seem in danger of going away any time soon," Yudof said at the meeting.

Nationwide, state and local higher education funding per student for 2005 was the lowest it's been since 1985, according to a March study. The study was conducted by the State Higher Education Executive Officers, a nonprofit association of chief executive officers serving on statewide coordinating and governing boards for higher education.

Per-student funding dropped nationally because there was almost no increase in state and local funding from 2001 to 2004, said Paul Lingenfelter, State Higher Education Executive Officers president. This funding drop accompanied a growth of more than 14 percent in both enrollment numbers and inflation from 2001 to 2005, according to the SHEEO Web site.

"What's happened is, as times have changed, enrollments have grown in elementary, secondary and higher education, Medicaid expenses have gone up, and the economy has turned down a bit. The reductions in taxes are hard to sustain as we're moving forward," he said.

UT-Austin's tuition increase includes a $150 utility fee for 2006-2007 and a $50 utility fee for 2007-2008. The tuition increases, less the utility fees, will generate an extra $37.3 million for the University the first year and $5.4 million the second, according to a November report by the Tuition Policy Advisory Committee. This will be used in part to fund the University's 10-year effort, which began in 2000, to bring 30 new faculty each year.

Of the increased funds, $2 million will be set aside each year to pay for a portion of the cost of rebuilding the Experimental Sciences Building, which failed to meet fire codes in spring 2005. The project requires additional funds from tuition revenue bonds from the Legislature or from Permanent University Fund bonds, which are issued by the UT System and come from the System endowment. The Board of Regents halted renovations in August after the Legislature failed to approve tuition revenue bonds, which are used to fund campus renovation projects.

When tuition was deregulated in 2003, the Legislature mandated that a minimum of 20 percent of tuition increases go to financial aid. University Chief Financial Officer Kevin Hegarty said about 24 percent of tuition increases, including the utility fee, will fund financial aid.

Nonresident tuition will increase significantly for new undergraduates beginning in the fall. In the next two years, tuition for new nonresident undergraduates will reach a rate of 3.2 times the resident cost, according to the University's tuition proposal, which the regents approved in March.

University President Bill Powers said it isn't fair for the state to subsidize education costs of out-of-state students who are not paying state taxes.

"It really is an equity issue," Powers told the regents at their March meeting.

The regents lauded student involvement in tuition proposals at the meeting. UT-Austin's proposal was drafted by the Tuition Policy Advisory Committee, which has nine voting members, four of them students.

"[Students] don't like rising prices anymore than anybody else, but they do understand we have a problem," Yudof said.

Yudof said another reason for rising costs is the "explosion of innovation" in science and technology, because it's more expensive to build science buildings with laboratories than other buildings with classrooms and offices.

"We are not presented with a situation where we can hold it all together by keeping tuition increases to zero," he said. "We are not a static picture."

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