Board of Regents increase out-of-state tuition
Jonathan Gneiser
Issue date: 10/8/01 Section: Campus News
|
The increase will add $126 to UW-Eau Claire out-of-state students’ spring semester tuition, said David Gessner, business services director. The additional 2.5 percent creates a total increase of 14 percent, from last year’s semester tuition of $5,111 to $5,820 under the new budget. This fall, Eau Claire out-of-state students paid $5,694.
Eau Claire’s $50 differential tuition fee is added to the total after the increase is factored.
The increase is necessary to comply with the 2001-03 budget bill signed by Gov. Scott McCallum, said Andrew Soll, vice chancellor for business and student services.
“We have a very small number of nonresidents, so this will affect a small part of our campus,” Soll said.
Last year, 252, or 2.4 percent of Eau Claire’s 10,560 enrolled students were nonresident or foreign, said Kay Magadance, UW-Eau Claire policy and planning analyst. This excludes Minnesota students treated as Wisconsin residents through reciprocity.
Rene Wilkinson, a senior from St. Louis, said she thinks less out-of-state students will come to UW-Eau Claire as a result of the tuition hike, and she’d reconsider if she were looking for a school now.
“I barely came here as it was, so if tuition was more I probably wouldn’t come,” Wilkinson said.
Soll said there has been some effort over the past few years by the board to have nonresidents pay a larger part of the cost of their instruction to lower the amount supported by Wisconsin taxpayers. This semester, tuition bills for out-of-state undergraduates included an increase of 12.9 percent for UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee and 11.5 percent for other UW four-year campuses. The increase reflected an extra 2.5 percent surcharge the Legislature had inserted in the budget.
McCallum used his partial veto authority to change the increase from 2.5 percent to 5 percent on Aug. 30 and made additional cuts to the UW System base budget. The additional increased tuition revenue is supposed to offset these cuts. Rather than charging nonresidents an additional bill for the fall semester, UW officials will cut money from other programs, Harris said. United Council academic affairs director Maggie Brown said she’s concerned the tuition increase will decrease diversity on campuses.