Tuition for in-state students at Metropolitan State College of Denver will jump 22.6 percent this fall.
The board of trustees for Metro State voted unanimously Wednesday to approve the increase, which will cost students almost $800 more a year.
“That is pretty steep,” said Kyle Crain, who will be a junior at Metro State. “That is definitely too much of a hike at one time.”
The college had been contemplating a 21 percent increase, but when the state declined to fund building maintenance on the Auraria campus, the three schools that operate there — Metro State, the University of Colorado Denver and Community College of Denver — decided to pitch in to fund the most necessary facility repairs themselves.
Metro State’s contribution to that fund will be more than $900,000, which required the additional 1.6 percentage point increase.
Other Front Range colleges are contemplating steep tuition increases as well. Colorado State University will vote this month to boost tuition by 20 percent. The University of Northern Colorado is considering a 15 percent hike.
Since 2008, state funding for Metro State has dropped to about $36 million from about $49 million, nearly a 27 percent decrease. In the same time, enrollment has increased by about 14 percent, with more than 24,000 students enrolled in 2010.
Metro State is facing a $7.1 million cut in state funding this year.
The college now receives about $2,100 in state funding per student, the second-lowest amount of per-pupil funding among the country’s 137 public colleges and universities with more than 15,000 students, president Steve Jordan said.
“I laid out the analysis for the board. Basically, we would need an increase of $2,500 just to get us to the top of the bottom quartile,” he said. “When you’re funded as low as we are, we had no other choice.”
Tuition and fees for full-time students will increase by $370 per semester with the Colorado College Opportunity Fund (COF) stipend to $2,416, up from $2,046 in the 2010-11 school year.
In comparison, resident tuition and fees for Adams State College for the fall is set at $2,813, while Mesa State College will charge $3,274 after COF.
“I think the reason people go to Metro is that the tuition is not too high, so they can afford it,” said Zia Safko, who will be a senior at Metro State in the fall. “These hikes will cause problems for a lot of kids.”
Crain transferred to Metro State from UC Denver after his freshman year because of the tuition but said the increase might mean there will be fewer students like him in the future.
“I transferred because it was too expensive, and now Metro is too expensive,” Crain said. “Kids will start going to community college for two years and then transferring to CU or CSU instead of doing four years at Metro.”
The school will cut 30 administrative positions this year, but Jordan fears further cuts next year will mean cutting degree programs too.
If those projections don’t change, Metro State will ask for a 13 percent tuition hike for the 2012-13 school year, Jordan said.
“While state revenue projections are growing, the state still likely won’t have revenues to fund everything, so there’s a significant likelihood of further cuts,” he said. “That’s what we worry about.”
Mitchell Byars: 303-954-1698 or mbyars@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to incorrect information provided by Metropolitan State,
the tuition increase at Metro State compared tuition and
fees for Metro that included the Colorado College Opportunity Fund
discount, with tuition and fees for Adams State and Mesa State
colleges that excluded the COF discount. Without the discount,
tuition and fees for the fall 2011 semester at Metro totals
$3,160.93.
