Costs for most UNM students to rise 3%

Regents vote to OK increases included in budget for fiscal 2022

University of New Mexico students will have to pay a little more in tuition and fees next year under budgets that received final regent approval on Tuesday.

For most in-state students on UNM’s main campus, the total cost will go up about 3%.

For undergraduates in lower-level courses, the combination of tuition and fees for a student taking 15 credit hours next school year will be about $4,614 per semester, about $133 more than the current school year. In-state graduate students will see their tuition and fees increase about $170 per semester, to $5,161, according to documents presented during Tuesday’s regents meeting.

Many UNM students also have additional costs per credit hour, called tuition differentials, depending on their field of study.

The increases were included in budget documents for the 2022 fiscal year. Regents voted 5-2 to approve them

for the main and branch campuses. They voted unanimously to approve the Health Sciences Center’s budget.

The cost increase for students includes a 2.2% tuition increase, as well as changes in the fees that students pay. Next year, students will pay a $100 fee each semester to the athletics department and $107 per semester for Student Health and Counseling services.

Out-of-state students will see larger tuition increases of a little more than 5%.

Regents Rob Schwartz and Kim Sanchez Rael voted against the budget proposals.

Schwartz said that, although he supported most of the budget, there were certain aspects, such as increasing the amount each student will pay to the athletics department, that led to his voting against the proposal. He also said the budget includes a complex method for calculating the overall cost of attending UNM, and that the budget made it difficult to track the university’s priorities.

“I thought we didn’t have any real discussion on priorities, and that’s unfortunate,” Schwartz said.

Sanchez Rael previously said that UNM shouldn’t be increasing the cost to attend while also trying to grow enrollment.

UNM administrators said that, in the past, when the school didn’t raise tuition at all for a year, the university imposed larger tuition hikes in subsequent years.

“Minimal predictable tuition increases provide needed resources to maintain the quality of our programs, while providing additional student aid to maintain accessibility,” Cinnamon Blair, a university spokeswoman, said in an email.

Overall, the entire UNM budget next fiscal year is projected to be about $3.4 billion, which includes a roughly $2.5 billion HSC budget and an $861 million main-campus budget.

The proposed budgets also include 1.5% pay increases for most UNM employees.