Published: May 09, 2008 11:08 pm      

EKU: 7 percent tuition hike approved

FRANKFORT— The tuition hike that the Eastern Kentucky University’s Board of Regents approved in April will not be as high for some students during the 2008-09 school year.

The EKU board approved an 8 percent increase for all resident and nonresident undergraduate and graduate students.

However, the state Council on Postsecondary Education approved on Friday only a 7 percent tuition increase for resident undergraduate students with all other classifications of students having to pay the 8 percent increase.

During the 2007-08 school year, 87.6 percent or 11,887 of EKU’s students were resident undergraduates.

The tuition per year for next year will include: a $398 increase, from $5,682 to $6,080, for resident undergraduate students, and a $1,230 increase, from $15,382 to $16,612, for non-resident undergraduates.

For graduate students, the tuition will include: a $492 increase, from $6,140 to $6,632, for resident students, and a $1,348 increase, from $16,838 to $18,186, for non-residents.

“The net difference for Eastern from what we had asked for and what the council approved is $479,000,” said EKU President Doug Whitlock. “We’ve got a $300 million budget. We’ll handle another $479,000.

“We would have been better off and our students would have been better off with it, but we’ll still be a good, solid institution next year,” he said. “I’m disappointed I wasn’t more persuasive, but there will be another day.”

A CPE budget and finance policy group heard tuition proposals from all public state universities last week before making a recommendation to the full council Friday.

“This committee, since the hearings not too many days ago, has worked really hard with the staff to come to these recommendations and conclusions,” said Dan Flanagan, CPE vice chair. “Anytime you don’t get somebody exactly what they feel like they need you may have an issue. But, it was our considered opinion and best judgment that we acted on the information we had.”

Institutions across the state proposed tuition increases in part to help offset 3 percent cuts in state appropriations each of the next two years.

The state CPE had requested for EKU a 6.8 percent increase, or $5.4 million more in general fund appropriation from the state from the previous year.

However, EKU actually will receive 5.7 percent less, or a decrease of $4.5 million for 2008-09 than last year.

“It will affect some of the decisions were making right now in positions,” Whitlock said about how the university will deal with the revenue loss from the reduction of the proposed tuition increase. “We’ve got a lot of positions we’ve frozen since January. This may have some impact on them. It may have some impact on some of our reserve funds. It may have impact on class size. It may have impact on some sections (of classes) that are offered.

“It will be a variety of things,” he said. “But, we’ll try to deal with it strategically in such a way that it impacts our academic program quality in a minimal way.”

While outlining the reasoning for EKU’s recommended tuition, John Hayek, interim vice president of finance for CPE, said the institution had an average annual 10-year increase in enrollment of .2 percent compared with 1.6 percent for the other comprehensive universities.

“Enrollment at Eastern Kentucky University has been very flat over the past 10 years comparatively to the other comprehensive institutions,” he said. “Certainly from an access perspective and realizing the aggressive enrollment goals as we move forward, this is something we’re concerned about at the state level.”

Hayek also said the past five-year average tuition increase for EKU undergraduates is 14.2 percent, the highest among all universities during the period.

“If you go back in a 15-year period, you’ll find Eastern’s tuition is one of the lowest,” Whitlock said. “What my predecessor (Joanne Glasser) and the board then were dealing with in those particular years was catch-up because quite frankly we had let our tuition get too low. We had to do more dramatic increases really then anyone would have liked.”

For the 2007-08 school year, EKU’s per-semester tuition of $2,841 ranks in the middle of the pack among other state institutions.

EKU is ahead of only Murray State University ($2,709), Kentucky State University ($2,660) and Morehead State University ($2,640).

University of Kentucky ($3,547), University of Louisville ($3,435), Western Kentucky University ($3,208) and Northern Kentucky University ($2,976) all have higher current per semester tuition rates.

CPE member Joseph Weis said he originally thought there should be zero increases in tuition at the state’s universities before realizing that it was unrealistic.

However, he said when presidents come back in the future asking for tuition increases there needs to be goals set.

“If we can develop a strategy where the cost of the education, which is important, are meeting the goals and the productivity, I believe we’ll have something here,” he said. “I believe we can be where we need to be. Part of the deal is how you do that. I think it falls on the legislature. It falls on the university presidents. And it falls on this council to work together to get that accomplished.”

Before the council voted, CPE Chair John Turner reminded presidents and officials from the institutions that the CPE and universities needed to turn the page and begin collaborating on a variety of issues after the tuition debate was finally settled.

“I hope at the end of the day you respect the decisions,” he said. “Understand that we really are your biggest supporters. We probably have to learn how to advocate better and more effectively, but we ultimately are your greatest supporters.”

With a clearer picture of projected revenue from tuition, the EKU Board of Regents will vote June 2 on the university’s budget.

“We’re all to some extent victims of a process that was not what it should have been, primarily because of the circumstances of the calendar we found ourselves on with the legislature finishing up with their veto days in mid-April,” Whitlock said. “I have to think there might have been a different outcome had the process allowed for more give-and-take of the recommendations. There was just not that flexibility in the calendar.”

Bryan Marshall can be reached at bmarshall@richmondregister.com or 624-6691.