Tuition will increase for in-state undergraduate students for the first time in five years after the Board of Regents approved the hike Friday.
The regents — a 17-member panel of gubernatorial appointees that oversees the university system — passed a 3-percent undergraduate tuition increase and larger hikes for graduate students. Combined with $166 in fee increases, the cost of attending the university for in-state undergraduates will rise by 4.5 percent.
“I think it’s about the best we could hope for,” university President Dan Mote said after the meeting. “Given the financial circumstances of the state, we should feel that the legislature and the governor did what they could for us.”
Student regent Sarah Elfreth was the only regent to vote against the tuition and fee increases. While expressing her support for a moderate tuition increase, Elfreth said she voted against the proposal because there is no long-term plan for higher education funding or tuition changes.
The board’s decision will end a four-year tuition freeze for in-state undergraduate students started in the final year of former Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s term. Because the state legislature cannot add to the governor’s proposed budget, the increase has been all but assured since Gov. Martin O’Malley presented his budget in January.
Out-of-state graduate tuition will rise 6 percent; in-state graduate tuition, which had not been previously frozen, will climb 6.2 percent.
Student leaders in attendance were not pleased with the outcome. Before the vote, Graduate Student Government President Anupama Kothari asked the board to freeze graduate tuition and reconsider the fee increases.
“I’m really disappointed,” she said after the meeting. “I testified last year and I got shot down last year as well. … I think it just goes to show the board’s unfairness towards graduate students on a constant basis.”
Both Kothari and Student Government Association President Steve Glickman took issue with a $119 increase in fees listed for technology. Before the board voted, Glickman, a member of the Committee for the Review of Student Fees, said he had just learned of the hike and that it had not received the proper university oversight.
Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie said $100 of the fee would go toward paying for electronic databases and creating a learning commons for the libraries, which was approved by the review committee under a different name. That $100 was then combined with the technology fee, she said.
“They are lumped together, but my office is responsible for dispersing the revenue,” Wylie said. “We will disperse it as presented to the student fee review committee.”
Still, Glickman said he disagreed in principle with the increase.
“It sets terrible precedents for the board to be able to charge students when the money can’t be obtained through state funding,” he said.
Mote said students supported the increase, but Kothari, also a member of the Committee for the Review of Student Fees, said she thought all but one of the students on the committee had voted against the fee.
“And also I think it’s too heavy a fee for this economic period,” Kothari said. “This is not a private university; this is a state school. People come here to get an affordable education.”
Elfreth motioned to vote on the technology fee separately, but the motion was defeated.
The board also directed the system’s universities to develop furlough plans to close a $26 million University System of Maryland budget shortfall. It is not clear what the university’s share of that total will be, but it is likely close to the $10.2 million the university had to save in furloughs this year, Mote said after the meeting.
Before the vote, University Senate Chairwoman Elise Miller-Hooks cautioned continued furloughs would make it hard to recruit new faculty members and drive university employees to find jobs elsewhere.
“In these tough economic times, furloughs have made a hard situation worse for members of our community,” she said. “Many of our faculty and staff are now considering alternative options.”
Although the topic was not on the agenda, Board of Regents Chairman Cliff Kendall read a letter from someone complaining about fan etiquette at basketball games and asked Glickman and Kothari how to improve behavior. Both student leaders said they were surprised by the question and that it was inappropriate for the meeting.
“I thought that was an extremely poor forum to mention that,” Kothari said. “Because it almost looked like: ‘Look at these students. These students riot at games — isn’t it fair that their fees should go up?'”
Glickman said it was unfair to treat the account presented in the letter as if it applied to all students, but he said his administration has already begun to work on the issue.
cox@umbdk.com
