The double-digit tuition hikes Colorado college students face this fall are the result of five years of systematically starving higher education through state funding cuts or stagnant budgets.
Instead of trying to block the University of Colorado’s tuition plan or pulling back what little state funding the school already receives, as he’s threatening to do, Gov. Bill Owens should be working to turn the tide by sufficiently funding higher education.
CU regents last weekend agreed to hike in-state tuition up to 28 percent for some students. How much more can the average, middle-class student afford?
The typical student of arts and sciences will pay $6,846 in tuition this coming year – a 28 percent jump. It’s an eye-popping number, but somewhat deceiving. School officials say the total cost of attendance is jumping “only” 9.5 percent because CU kept a lid on room and board and fees. All told, in-state students can expect to spend $20,500 a year for everything, which is an increase of $1,781 over last year.
That’s a sizeable increase, to be sure, but far more manageable than the 28 percent increase that’s been bandied about.
Owens and Colorado Commission of Higher Education director Rick O’Donnell say they were surprised by CU’s big tuition hike. But the state and CU very clearly agreed to increase tuition revenue – not just individual tuition rates – by 11.3 percent, or $43.5 million in the state budget bill.
So where did they think that extra $43.5 million was going to come from?
O’Donnell contends that CU administrators agreed not to raise tuition substantially more than 11.3 percent per student in exchange for flexibility in determining rates. CU officials dispute that agreement ever was made, and the record bears them out. O’Donnell on Tuesday, after re-listening to tapes of a CCHE meeting with CU President Elizabeth Hoffman, said Hoffman argued against a “hard cap” on tuition increases in exchange for more flexibility on who was charged what. O’Donnell agreed, thinking CU would keep most in-state tuition hikes to around 11 percent, and find additional revenue by hiking out-of-state rates or rates for one or two high-cost programs.
“We didn’t expect an across-the-board increase,” he said.
However, a big hike in out-of-state tuition didn’t prove to be feasible. In recent years, out-of-state students have heavily subsidized Coloradans. But at $21,500 a year, CU has maxed out what it can charge those students. In fact, the number of non-residents attending CU will drop 6.8 percent this year – a huge financial loss for the school.
The number would have been even lower, but CU officials changed their policies this spring, offering to lock in this fall’s higher rate for four years. To boost CU’s sagging numbers, worried admissions officials even called out-of-state students to tell them about the change.
A year’s worth of bad publicity surrounding its football team and professor Ward Churchill has diminished CU’s popularity, but officials said the main reason students gave for choosing another school was cost.
So with a falling crop of out-of-state freshmen, CU has turned to in-state students to make up the extra $43.5 million in their state authorized budget.
As a member of the Joint Budget Committee that approved the state budget bill, Rep. Tom Plant, D-Boulder, said he wasn’t surprised to learn CU would charge in-state students considerably more than last year.
“That was always the understanding I had,” he said. “We know out-of-state tuition has met its price point. We knew in-state was much lower, so we figured the bulk of the increase would be in residential.”
Part of the dispute stems from the fact that education is funded differently now because of the Colorado Opportunity Funds, which are individual state vouchers credited to students to escape revenue limits under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
CU was given more flexibility in how it raised its revenue, and Owens and O’Donnell aren’t happy with the result.
Part of the revenue will fund grants for low-income students since Colorado is one of the few states that doesn’t offer financial aid to low-income kids. That was one of the first things cut when Colorado began experiencing its budget crisis – even though the state was simultaneously talking about how it could get more low-income students into college.
O’Donnell and Owens are concerned that middle-class students will be gouged under CU’s plan, and they’re right to worry. But O’Donnell is wrong to blast CU by blaming a “bloated bureaucracy” and saying the school should tighten its belt before hitting up students for more cash. It’s an unfair statement, to say the least, and unexpected coming from O’Donnell, who’s running for Congress. He’s trying to be a hero of the taxpayer, but he should know better than anyone else that state funding cuts have forced CU to trim administrative costs to less than 5 percent of total expenses. The nationwide average is between 7 percent and 8 percent.
Even though O’Donnell says CU’s tuition hike isn’t “a done deal,” it’s clear the school needs money. The first thing voters can do is approve Referendum C this fall, freeing up more state revenue for higher education. Then, CU and the CCHE should negotiate in better faith, using a common abacus, clearly spelling out CU’s upcoming tuition levels as early as possible for Colorado families. No one should be surprised next year.
