Tuition freeze costs Truman
Andrea Hewitt
Issue date: 11/19/09 Section: News
Truman faces a five percent cut in state funding, following an announcement from Gov. Jay Nixon's office Tuesday. The funding cut will cost Truman $2.3 million.
"The governor announced an agreement with the presidents of Missouri's four-year universities and colleges that would freeze tuition for the 2010-11 school year," Nixon's spokesman Scott Holste said. "If this goes through, this will be the second year in a row that tuition was frozen for in-state undergraduate students at those universities."
The terms of the agreement dictate that the funding for these schools will be reduced by 5.2 percent or $42 million, Holste said. However, there are multiple steps before the agreement will be made into policy.
Please see FREEZE, page 7
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"On the funding side of the equation, the general assembly will have to, in its budget appropriations, appropriate at least as much as the governor has laid out in this agreement, which is 95 percent of the previous year's appropriations," Holste said. "Everything is dependent on both sides of the equation happening."
Also, for this agreement to be implemented, the governing bodies of each of Missouri's 13 four-year public colleges would have to approve the freeze, Holste said.
Cody Sumter, student representative to the Board of Governors, said he saw no reason why the Board wouldn't pass this agreement. The agreement was passed last year, but this year's version has a few changes, Sumter said.
"This year, the agreement is different because there is no increase in just tuition, and we will get 95 percent of our funding back," Sumter said. "We will either have to make up that money or cut places or a combination of both."
With Truman facing a 5 percent decrease in funding and with in-state tuition locked in, cuts on campus would have to be made, Sumter said.
"There's nowhere to cut unless we go straight into faculty," Sumter said. "Other places can be cut but just not [enough] to make up for the differences. Options are some sort of fee structure, cuts to faculty or a combination thereof. You can save money elsewhere. Certainly, student affairs will have to pool some money, but their budget is so small comparatively. For example, you eliminate athletics and you just make a very small dent in it."
Interim President Darrell Krueger said ways to gain back money lost in the cuts would be to raise tuition for out-of-state and graduate students or to charge fees for high-cost programs such as business, nursing and teacher education.
Without the freeze, tuition could increase only as much as the Consumer Price Index, Krueger said. Last year when the freeze was implemented, the CPI was so low students would have faced only a $6 tuition increase, he said.
The CPI for October 2009 is lower than the October 2008 CPI, according to inflationdata.com, meaning that if the CPI stayed on track with the CPI of last year, students would not have seen large tuition increases even without the freeze.
"The governor announced an agreement with the presidents of Missouri's four-year universities and colleges that would freeze tuition for the 2010-11 school year," Nixon's spokesman Scott Holste said. "If this goes through, this will be the second year in a row that tuition was frozen for in-state undergraduate students at those universities."
The terms of the agreement dictate that the funding for these schools will be reduced by 5.2 percent or $42 million, Holste said. However, there are multiple steps before the agreement will be made into policy.
Please see FREEZE, page 7
Continued from Page 1
"On the funding side of the equation, the general assembly will have to, in its budget appropriations, appropriate at least as much as the governor has laid out in this agreement, which is 95 percent of the previous year's appropriations," Holste said. "Everything is dependent on both sides of the equation happening."
Also, for this agreement to be implemented, the governing bodies of each of Missouri's 13 four-year public colleges would have to approve the freeze, Holste said.
Cody Sumter, student representative to the Board of Governors, said he saw no reason why the Board wouldn't pass this agreement. The agreement was passed last year, but this year's version has a few changes, Sumter said.
"This year, the agreement is different because there is no increase in just tuition, and we will get 95 percent of our funding back," Sumter said. "We will either have to make up that money or cut places or a combination of both."
With Truman facing a 5 percent decrease in funding and with in-state tuition locked in, cuts on campus would have to be made, Sumter said.
"There's nowhere to cut unless we go straight into faculty," Sumter said. "Other places can be cut but just not [enough] to make up for the differences. Options are some sort of fee structure, cuts to faculty or a combination thereof. You can save money elsewhere. Certainly, student affairs will have to pool some money, but their budget is so small comparatively. For example, you eliminate athletics and you just make a very small dent in it."
Interim President Darrell Krueger said ways to gain back money lost in the cuts would be to raise tuition for out-of-state and graduate students or to charge fees for high-cost programs such as business, nursing and teacher education.
Without the freeze, tuition could increase only as much as the Consumer Price Index, Krueger said. Last year when the freeze was implemented, the CPI was so low students would have faced only a $6 tuition increase, he said.
The CPI for October 2009 is lower than the October 2008 CPI, according to inflationdata.com, meaning that if the CPI stayed on track with the CPI of last year, students would not have seen large tuition increases even without the freeze.
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