Colorado State University’s last-minute plea to get an extra $34 million in tuition was the latest dust-up pitting college against college in a cash-starved system.
In the sharpest tone yet of a funding battle intensifying since 2000, CSU president Larry Penley publicly accused lawmakers and the governor of giving the University of Colorado preferential treatment.
The crux of Penley’s argument is that as state funds for higher education were being slashed, lawmakers tightened limits on tuition hikes after CU aggressively raised its tuition.
CSU, meanwhile, did not keep up – though opinions vary about whether the university was stifled or whether CSU simply took the politically safe route, accepting no for an answer when CU refused.
Either way, the result was a dramatic divergence in tuition at the state’s two largest research universities that has prompted Penley to threaten scholarship cuts and smaller faculty raises.
In 2001, it cost an in-state student $100 more to attend CU than CSU. This year, the difference is close to $1,100.
“CU was much more proactive in their lobbying efforts,” said Richard Schweigert, CSU’s chief financial officer. “In no way am I blaming CU. My hat is off to them.”
Still, CU officials got defensive after CSU’s eleventh-hour budget amendment and follow- up news release saying the state is “holding down CSU’s ability to serve its mission while allowing CU to expand theirs.”
The tactics “shift the focus from the lack of funding to people worrying there’s been unequal funding,” said Robert Moore, CU’s vice president for budget and finance.
7% overall increase
The state budget that lawmakers are about to approve holds both schools to a 7 percent overall increase in tuition next year.
But because CU has outpaced CSU in tuition hikes for the past several years and because it has more students, a 7 percent increase means $32 million for CU and $11 million for CSU.
But so what, says Sen. Steve Johnson, a Republican from Fort Collins who helped quash CSU’s budget amendment.
“Why should CU and CSU be equal?” the CSU alum asked, pointing out that they have different missions and expenses. CU and CSU officials agree they are not exact equals: CU has a high-cost medical school and four campuses; CSU boasts a top-notch veterinary school and bioscience programs.
CSU leaders point out that CU is suffering financially, too. Both universities are struggling to compete nationally in faculty-student ratios and professor salaries.
But CSU’s Penley said his university deserves some parity.
“What we’re asking for is a reasonable amount of equity,” he said. “In the best of possible worlds, the state would provide substantially more support for higher education and we would not be asking for substantial increases in tuition funding.”
CU’s 2004 distinction
CU leaped significantly ahead of CSU in 2004, when it became the first university to gain “business enterprise status.” The distinction – achieved by other colleges in 2005 – frees tuition revenue from limits imposed by the state’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
CU increased tuition 8 percent overall for the 2004-05 school year and 11 percent the next year, sticking much of the increase on some in-state students at the Boulder campus who had to pay 28 percent more.
Tuition at CSU, meanwhile, went up a mere 1 percent for 2004-05.
Penley points toward a different makeup on CSU’s board of governors back then. The current board is more aggressive in pushing for an improved “quality of education experience,” he said.
Penley would not go so far as to say that the former board of governors, appointees of the governor, played it safe politically.
In contrast, CU regents are elected, and the flagship university strained its political relationships with big tuition increases.
Both universities were gambling with the tuition-enrollment equation.
CSU’s lower tuition costs haven’t resulted in an enrollment boom, though.
Despite CU’s bigger tuition hikes, it now has 18,020 in-state students in Boulder compared with 17,550 in Fort Collins. In 1999, CSU had more resident students than CU.
Many resented request
Many statehouse lawmakers resented CSU’s request to change the budget.
The problem, as one higher-education lobbyist put it, is that “it’s hard to have good table manners when you’re starving.”
The state’s higher-education funding has shrunk dramatically as health care, prisons and K-12 education gobble up the budget.
The percentage of the state budget going to higher education has dropped from 22.4 percent in 1983 to 7.5 percent this year.
Colorado colleges and universities would need an additional $832 million per year to get the average state funding of their peers, according to the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.
The higher-education system is on “survival mode,” said Sen. Gail Schwartz, a Snowmass Village Democrat who was a CU regent last year.
Schwartz voted for CSU’s tuition amendment because she knows “how desperate these institutions are.”
CU has had some obvious successes at the Capitol this year that didn’t go unnoticed by other institutions.
One new law gives the university’s medical school millions of dollars each year from tobacco- settlement funds, and Gov. Bill Ritter approved $7 million for a new engineering building at CU’s Colorado Springs campus.
Political favoritism?
But Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, says it’s ridiculous to think the flagship school – which he says suffered the most during the recession – is enjoying any political favoritism.
“No college or university feels like they’re getting their fair share,” said Tupa, who has been a lawmaker for 13 years and got his teaching certificate from CU. “It’s just never happened.”
Tupa voted against CSU’s tuition request and said it “showed bad form politically.”
“It certainly didn’t win CSU any friends,” he said.
CSU’s Penley said he didn’t intend to “make this an issue of CU versus CSU” but to “draw attention to the issues of higher- education funding.”
David Skaggs, executive director of the Department of Higher Education, would not say whether one of the research universities was getting shafted.
“Every single one of them has a case to make,” he said.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
