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NEWS
| October 22, 2003
Tuition and Fees
Ward: Tuition changes may be hard
to make
Administrators will discuss financial
data with the review board on Thursday.
By Amber
Tafoya
The Shorthorn news editor
Administrators finished compiling information Tuesday that could
contribute to a change in the tuition increase proposal.
Rusty Ward, interim vice president for business affairs and controller,
spent the last few days searching for numbers to facilitate student-suggested
changes to an administration-backed tuition increase proposal. The
Tuition Review Committee, which will meet at 3 p.m. Thursday in
a closed-door meeting, gave Ward its suggestions last week.
Ward and the committee will discuss the information he has gathered
during the session.
Ward said his job was to condense his research into something readable
and place a price on each idea.
“I am trying to price it,” Ward said. “I am not
trying to make any decisions on whether it’s a good idea or
a bad one.”
Ward said some of the committee’s ideas are expensive and
the university can’t afford to make some of the changes. The
committee must make that decision, he added, before recommending
a plan to interim President Charles Sorber.
Committee Chairman Josh Warren said he plans to work with the numbers
Ward will provide to reach a compromise.
“I am very confident we will come up with a compilation that
will meet the university’s financial requirements and be accepted
by the students,” said Warren, also Student Congress president.
Warren said he will fight for students to have time to prepare their
finances before increases take place. There must be an increase
in the spring, he said, but students want it to be less.
Ward said if the proposed increase is cut, students must prepare
to make sacrifices in student services. Theoretically, the university
will receive the same amount of money it usually does, but a set
of new problems would result, he said.
The university, for example, may not have enough money to bring
in qualified faculty.
“We need enough money to make good offers,” he said.
Bryan Shaner said an increase is needed to bring in faculty but
wants to fund the positions through a fee increase. Shaner, the
business administration representative on the Tuition Review Committee,
on Tuesday completed a draft of his proposal calling for additional
revenue through increasing fees instead of tuition rates. Shaner
plans to present the plan to committee members today via e-mail.
State law mandates that 20 percent of the revenue generated by tuition
increases go to financial aid. Money raised through fees would not
be subject to the 20 percent set-asides, which Shaner believes would
save students money. Shaner’s plan would not go into effect
until next fall if the provision is adopted.
Ward said raising fees instead of tuition would be difficult because
administrators must also calculate how much is needed to transfer
expenditures.
This is where decision-making will become difficult for the committee,
Warren said. It must place pieces of a puzzle together to find a
solution.
“As of now, anything could go,” Warren said.
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tuition
Deregulation Data Bank
For more information about tuition deregulation,
visit the Data
Bank.
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| Rusty
Ward, interim vice president for business affairs
and controller, says he had to place a price on each
idea
More on tuition increases.
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