Tuition increase

A tuition increase of six percent was approved for the 2010-2011 school year by the Board of Regents at a meeting held at Snow College on April 1.

The prospect of tuition increase has seemed inevitable, especially in the midst of major budget cuts and other roadblocks in the path of quality higher education. This month each school in the state of Utah was forced to raise tuition to compensate for lack of funding.

“Every institution has a variety of pressures on its expenditures, and tuition increase is based on the institution’s needs,” said UVU Executive Director of Planning and Budget Linda Makin. “We thought it was going to have to be somewhere between six and 10 percent.”

The first tier increase for the school year will be 1.5 percent, which translates into a 52 dollar increase. The second tier will raise tuition an additional 4.5 percent. Together the first and second tier increases mean an additional 208 dollars a year for the resident students of UVU.

“The nice thing about the tuition increase is that all those dollars stay at UVU,” said Makin. “Those dollars will be deployed as part of our budget allocations for the coming year and will be used to support student success initiatives.”

Though the increase may seem like a stroke of bad luck, it could have been much worse. Commissioner of Higher Education Bill Sederburg noted that tuition increase would have been much higher if the legislature and the Governor had not agreed to restore millions of dollars in higher education budgets.

“Our tuition increase is very reasonable and the bottom line is students will benefit from it,” said Makin. “Your services will be better, and hopefully more class sections will be open with salaried faculty members teaching the subjects.”

Makin noted that the administration was pleased that they could bring the tuition rates in at 6 percent despite constant cuts to higher education.