Students often wonder where the money goes or where it comes from when tuition and fees increase.
According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 16 states have increased tuition and fees at four-year colleges and universities by more than 10 percent in the past year. Massachusetts had the highest increase with 24 percent, and Missouri, Iowa and Texas were next with 20 percent.
These increases, along with cuts in state funding, have put a strain on higher education across the country and caused many institutions to look for alternate ways to obtain money.
Robert Kuhn, assistant vice chancellor for the Office of Budget and Planning, said Louisiana has not cut the University’s budget in many years and students should not worry about unexpected tuition increases.
“The state has a constitutional amendment that says an increase in tuition has to be approved by two-thirds of the legislature,” Kuhn said.
He said a 3 percent tuition increase, approved for a three-year period by the legislature, is already in effect.
“It comes to about $51 a year,” Kuhn said. “Those students with TOPS have it paid for.”
Kuhn said increases in fees are a direct result of student voting.
“The Union fee and Rec fee are not instructional fees and students voted to asses themselves for that money,” he said.
Kuhn said the University gets a lot of funding from the state, but oftentimes it needs to internally allocate its resources if expenses go up.
For example, Kuhn said the University passed a 3 percent merit increase in November for faculty and staff salaries. He said the state did not give the University extra money for that because it was not academic-related.
“Insurance for faculty and staff is also going up,” Kuhn said. “That’s $3.5 million more plus another $1 million for classified staff pay increases. If the state doesn’t give us that, we have to give internal re-evaluations.”
He said, at worst, the University would not be able to hire new staff positions or even fire current personnel.
However, Kuhn said this is far from being a threat since large amounts of money to a student are small compared to what the University deals with.
“We deal with $300 million a year,” he said. “So when the state doesn’t give us $500,000 or $1 million, it would hurt, but it’s small when you look at it [in increments].”
Kuhn said when the University’s three-year tuition increase is up, another appropriation will be brought to the legislature to determine whether another increase will go into effect.
In the past seven years, tuition and fees have increased by $400 for undergraduate resident students and $1,400 for undergraduate non-resident students, according to the Office of Budget and Planning.