With almost everyone from faculty and administrators to students surprised by the Board of Regents’ decision last week to make the smallest tuition increase in 10 years, BOR officials say putting more of the financial burdens of state cuts on students would have guaranteed more cuts next year.
Paul Turman, BOR associate vice president for academic affairs, said the state legislature, which took 62 percent of the total state budget cuts out from the BOR fund, made it clear that cuts to programs and services would have to happen to make up for the deficit, not passing the buck onto the students.
“The legislature was quite adamant that the … cuts that we received were not something that we could just off-load onto students,” he said.
Continuing to raise tuition and fees at a more traditional rate would be detrimental to the future integrity of BOR institutions, he said.
“If all we did is simply backfill those (cuts), we would go to the legislature next year and they would say, ‘Well, you seem to be surviving pretty well with taking a four-percent cut across the board, why don’t we do that again.’”
Though it is lower than typical, the 4.6-percent tuition and fee increase, which will create about $3 million, replaces just under half of the $6,512,912 cut to the BOR’s state budget. The hole USD and the Sanford School of Medicine would have been expected to fill with reductions was cut in half from $1,451,551 to $725,957 by the BOR’s decision.
Despite being the smallest tuition and fee increase in recent history, some students say the hike, which will result in students on average paying an additional $312 for college next year, is still too much. Senior Brandon Haiar said the student incentive for paying additional fees just isn’t in the equation.
“It sucks because no one wants to pay more money and the only reason you’d want to pay more for tuition is if you’re expecting a higher return on your investment in college,” he said referring to impending cuts to USD programs.
Graduate student Anji Butta said raising the price of higher education every year is not acceptable.
“(4.6 percent) is not reasonable. It’s a very high fee increase. Students don’t get much support,” he said.
Student Government Association President Tim Carr empathized with students objections about the increase but said “it’s a lot better than it could have been.”
“Obviously anytime tuition increases it’s tough on students but it’s a natural thing. To be honest, the (4.6-percent increase) is probably welcome news,” he said.
Though things may seem dire with the deficit the university is left to deal with, Carr said tough financial times can sometimes result in positives for an institution or business.
“Budget cuts can be a good thing for the university if we become more efficient and more effective in how we operate,” he said.
Although a higher increase would have further reduced the university’s budget deficit, Chuck Staben, provost and vice president of academic affairs, said the BOR did what they had to do in order to maintain quality and marketing capability.
“The Regents were trying to keep tuition and fees very competitive regionally with other public institutions and ensure that students would have access to the universities and that access wouldn’t be compromised by too large of a raise in tuition fees,” he said.
The University Budget Committee meets Monday and Tuesday to finalize budget recommendations that will be given to the University Executive Committee.
Early in the year, the university deans were asked to review their department budgets and determine where, if they had to, they would make a three-to-seven-percent cut.
President James Abbott said in an e-mail Monday that the fiscal year 2011 budget will be announced by April 28.
Reach reporter Joe Sneve at Joe.Sneve@usd.edu.
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