Spring Break
Pending final budget approval, tuition increases are planned
Elyse Jarvis
Issue date: 4/6/09 Section: News
As the state makes amendments to its annual budget proposal Â-- the Long Bill -- this week, CSU administration said tuition spikes are already planned.
Interim CSU President Tony Frank said reduction scenarios are not yet finalized, but CSU is operating under the assumption that tuition fees will see the following increases:
A 9 percent swell in undergraduate resident tuition rates,
A 3 percent swell in non-resident undergraduate rates,
A 15 percent swell in resident graduate rates and
A 5 percent swell in non-resident graduate rates.
The increases are in response to the Wednesday announcement that Colorado's Joint Budget Committee, a bipartisan group of legislators that drafts the budget bill, recommended a $300 million cut from state higher education funding -- a strike that would chop the $130 million CSU currently receives from the state in half, Frank said.
The upsurge in requested tuition dollars was additionally made possible last week by the JBC, who did away with the former 6.5 percent spending cap, instead granting universities the authority to push tuition to "where they feel the market will bear," said Don Marostica, Larimer County's JBC representative.
The state, however, will only support with grants and scholarships increases of up to 9 percent, forcing schools to swallow the possibility of going under should they place too much of the monetary burden on students and see enrollment declines as a result.
Frank said the state's higher education cuts create a hole that would be impossible to fill solely with money from students, as the market, he said, needs time to adjust to rate hikes.
"Effectively, if that amount of money went away, you would nearly need to double your tuition to make up for it," he said, calling an increase of that size "bad educational policy."
"As a land-grant institution, providing public access to education is heart and soul to the mission of what we do. Drastically raising tuition flies in the face of that mission."
Interim CSU President Tony Frank said reduction scenarios are not yet finalized, but CSU is operating under the assumption that tuition fees will see the following increases:
A 9 percent swell in undergraduate resident tuition rates,
A 3 percent swell in non-resident undergraduate rates,
A 15 percent swell in resident graduate rates and
A 5 percent swell in non-resident graduate rates.
The increases are in response to the Wednesday announcement that Colorado's Joint Budget Committee, a bipartisan group of legislators that drafts the budget bill, recommended a $300 million cut from state higher education funding -- a strike that would chop the $130 million CSU currently receives from the state in half, Frank said.
The upsurge in requested tuition dollars was additionally made possible last week by the JBC, who did away with the former 6.5 percent spending cap, instead granting universities the authority to push tuition to "where they feel the market will bear," said Don Marostica, Larimer County's JBC representative.
The state, however, will only support with grants and scholarships increases of up to 9 percent, forcing schools to swallow the possibility of going under should they place too much of the monetary burden on students and see enrollment declines as a result.
Frank said the state's higher education cuts create a hole that would be impossible to fill solely with money from students, as the market, he said, needs time to adjust to rate hikes.
"Effectively, if that amount of money went away, you would nearly need to double your tuition to make up for it," he said, calling an increase of that size "bad educational policy."
"As a land-grant institution, providing public access to education is heart and soul to the mission of what we do. Drastically raising tuition flies in the face of that mission."
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