Tuition hikes scaled back
Perry helps persuade regents to drop plans to increase in-state fees.
Responding to Gov. Rick Perry’s 11th-hour call to hold the line on tuition, the University of Texas System Board of Regents abruptly dropped plans Wednesday to raise charges for in-state students at UT-Austin and eight other academic campuses.
Instead, regents will try to figure out how they might tap the Permanent University Fund, a multibillion-dollar higher education endowment, to come up with the millions of dollars that campus leaders say they need for student advising, faculty salaries, academic programs and other operations.
“He did influence the process,” regents’ Chairman Paul Foster said of Perry, who wrote to Foster earlier in the day. “Absolutely. He’s the governor of this state, and I believe that’s his role.”
In his letter, the governor urged the board to explore its options.
“To put a college degree within reach for more students and to combat the epidemic of student indebtedness, we should place a far greater emphasis on controlling the spiraling costs of a college education,” Perry wrote. “Forcing students
to bear the brunt of additional costs is not the solution.”
However, the regents voted unanimously to approve tuition and fee increases for out-of-state students at the academic campuses. Tuition increases for five health campuses were also approved; the sixth, in Tyler, didn’t seek a tuition increase. The regents noted that charges at the health campuses generally run far below national averages.
By following the governor’s lead, the regents — all of whom were appointed by Perry — essentially upended months of planning by campus leaders, staff members and students.
The governor’s intervention was reminiscent of his call two years ago for governing boards to hold the line on tuition, even as legislative funding was being reduced. That time, the UT regents rejected a tuition increase sought by UT-Austin but allowed most of the other academic and health campuses in the UT System to raise academic charges for undergraduates from Texas, although not by as much as some of the campuses had sought.
Perry didn’t object when the Texas A&M University System raised tuition recently, including for his alma mater in College Station.
“It’s important to recognize Texas A&M University System’s recent actions also include cost-savings efforts such as a hiring freeze that will direct unspent salaries to educational and research funding,” said Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed.
Foster said he hoped to come up with a way to tap the endowment and provide the academic schools with annually recurring revenue sufficient to avoid the tuition increases that had been proposed. He said drawing from the Permanent University Fund is “the most likely scenario.”
That might require some creative accounting. The state constitution bars the UT System from using the endowment’s proceeds for operational purposes, except for the system’s central administration and the Austin campus. The endowment is used more widely for constructing campus buildings.
Foster said one possibility is to identify campus expenses that the central administration could cover, perhaps by consolidating some services. The system, in turn, would draw additional sums from the endowment for its operations.
“Obviously, we’ll do it correctly and within the law and the constitution,” Foster said. “We’ll make a proposal and bring it to the board.”
He said that would happen Tuesday at a telephone meeting previously scheduled to firm up the appointment of Guy Bailey, former president of the University of Alabama and Texas Tech University, to lead the system’s new UT-Rio Grande Valley. It’s important to resolve the tuition matter promptly so that students and their families know what charges they will face this fall, Foster said.
UT-Austin officials are eager to see what the regents propose to avoid a tuition increase for students from Texas, said Gary Susswein, a university spokesman.
Addressing the regents earlier Wednesday, UT-Austin President Bill Powers proposed an increase of 2.1 percent, or $104, per semester for undergraduates from Texas. That would raise tuition and fees to $5,003.
Powers also proposed an increase of 8 percent, or $392, to $5,291 for students opting for a new, guaranteed tuition plan for which the rate would stay at that level for four years. That plan is also on hold until the regents decide how to proceed. A fixed-rate option was mandated for public universities by the Legislature in an effort to encourage timely graduation and assist in financial planning.
The regents approved UT-Austin’s proposal to raise academic charges for out-of-state undergraduates by 2.6 percent, or $440, to $17,361 per semester, effective this fall.