(Radio Iowa) – The Board of Regents approved a three percent increase in tuition and mandatory fees for all undergraduate students at its meeting today (Thursday). The 8-1 vote came after student representatives from the three state schools gave their input. University of Iowa student body president-elect Emily Cross says capping the increases at three percent is good, but said the Board needs to look at what that number means.
“For out-of-state students like me, that brings the total cost to about 34-thousand-247 dollars, an increase of more than 500 dollars in a single year,” she says. Cross says three percent may sound modest, but it happens year after year. “For students, that means the cost of staying here doesn’t just rise once, it compounds. What starts as a few hundred dollars becomes thousands over the course of a degree. From my perspective, that impact is very real. It’s not just a number on a bill, it affects daily decisions,” Cross says.
Regent Christine Hensley was the only vote against the increase. Hensley says she is focused on the budget gaps and using a tuition increase to make them up. “The fact that you’re going to have students that have to incur way more debt. And we’re talking about wanting to make it affordable for the students here. So I have real concerns about a three percent increase right now,” Hensley says. Hensley says nobody wants to have to deal with budget gaps.
“However, when you look at the overall percentage of those gaps compared to the total budget, I cannot believe that it’s going to be that difficult to make up those gaps. And when you look at what the legislature is doing right now, they’ve got a budget that’s going to be a one-point-six percent increase. One-point-six. You have a cap that cities are being required to adhere to. Two percent,” Hensley says.
Hensley says the Regents can’t continue increasing tuition every single year. She says there’s an efficiency study they are waiting on from the universities and there’s also a bill on a tuition guarantee that is in the legislature. “I just think that this is a year that we should have a pause and not have a tuition increase. Even if there’s a feeling that you still need to move forward with the tuition increase, three percent is too much when you look at everything else that’s going on within the state,” Hensley says.
Hensley is a former Des Moines City Council member and former executive director of the YWCA of Greater Des Moines. Board president Robert Cramer says the increase is a matter of simple math. “The state is providing a third of the money for our general education budget and they’re not increasing us at all, we’re increasing our two-thirds tuition by three percent,” he says. That’s a net of two percent over our entire general education budget, so to me, it’s pretty lean.”
The move will increase in-state undergraduate tuition at the University of Iowa by 287 dollars, 286 dollars at Iowa State University, and 262 dollars at the University of Northern Iowa.
