ADELPHI — The University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents voted yesterday to increase tuition for in-state university students by $366 and $1,390 for out-of-state students in the fall — rejecting an amendment to cap increases to 5 percent for the next three years.
System Chancellor Brit Kirwan’s recommendations called for an average 5.8 percent funding increase among the system’s institutions, with the university receiving the highest rate.
Next fall, in-state students will pay 5.9 percent more than the current $6,200 and out-of-state students will pay 7.9 percent more than the current $17,500.
The regents also endorsed Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s allowance of $43 million for higher education, the first increase the system received after two years of cuts totaling about $120 million.
“[The budget] will prevent further erosion in quality,” Kirwan said. “The big winners in this budget are students.”
However, Regent Jim Rosapepe said the system still needs more. He introduced an amendment that would require the board to go back and ask the governor to increase the system’s budget, allowing the regents to cap tuition increases at 5 percent. It also specified significant compulsory funding boosts that would keep tuition hikes at 5 percent until 2007.
The amendment spurred debate among the regents in the board’s finance committee meeting, with some supporting Rosapepe and others saying they wanted to move forward with the budget the governor set.
“The problem is the tuition in the state is out of control,” Rosapepe said. “We shouldn’t be nickel and diming students who had 30-percent increases in the last two years. Instead of it coming out of students’ pockets, it should come out of the general funds.”
Regent and former Sen. Joseph Tydings — one of the three regents who supported the amendment — said that in forming a budget, the “easy, vulnerable, sitting target is public higher education” when cuts need to be made.
But the majority of the regents disagreed, saying Kirwan and Board Chairman Cliff Kendall had worked hard in Annapolis to win the system extra funding, and they all thanked Ehrlich for the increase.
“For [Kirwan] to go back to the governor and say, ‘You didn’t give enough,’ is going to be a terrible mistake,” said Regent and former Gov. Marvin Mandel. “The future is bright, but it isn’t going to be bright if we go back to the governor and say it isn’t enough.”
A month before releasing his budget, Mandel said, Ehrlich had only allotted the system about $30 million, but the boost came after Kirwan’s many meetings in Annapolis.
Many officials, including regents and university President Dan Mote and Vice President for Administrative Affairs John Porcari, said they thought Rosapepe’s amendment was the wrong approach.
“I believe this is a politically motivated document,” Regent Robert Pevenstein said. “I don’t think politics should be a part of our policy.”
But after the meeting, Rosapepe defended his actions.“You don’t take politics out of public decision-making,” he said. “As a result of this vote, [tuition] is going to go up too much.”
But there was part of Rosapepe’s proposal Kirwan said he was a “strong advocate” of — the specified figures for funding increases in 2006 and 2007 were formed on a per-student basis, by which state funding adjusts with changes in the system’s total students.
“It’s the single best way to ensure that we have quality and capacity locked in,” Kirwan said. “The idea here needs to be worked on and pursued and sold to our state leaders.”Several state legislators are including per-student funding in bills to be heard in Annapolis this spring.
Of Ehrlich’s $43 million allotment, about $37 million goes to the system’s general fund, and of that, this university will see a budget increase of 4.1 percent. With a tuition increase of 5.9 percent, the university will be able to break even with its own budget.
David Nevins, vice chairman of the board, said the regents will be meeting sometime this semester to adopt a policy that would restructure the budget and outline the tuition for the next four years.
