Board of Regents Approves Fee Increase

Mar 21, 2008 by Jeff Robinson

Averages Out to 5.7 Percent For State Colleges and Universities

(KCPW News) Cash-strapped students will have to dig a bit further into their bank accounts to go to college in Utah next fall. Today, the Utah State Board of Regents unanimously approved a tuition increase for all of Utah's ten public colleges and universities that averages out to 5.7 percent per school. Although this is the lowest tuition increase since 2001, Regent David Jordan said the state needs to come up with a different way to fund community colleges so more students can afford to go.

"We're just doing this wrong, and we're creating access and retention problems," said Jordan. "We spent all that time yesterday talking about retention. We're aggravating the retention problems that we already have."

Despite the tuition increase for enrolled students, Salt Lake Community College is lowering the tuition rate for technical training at its non-credit Skills Center by 22 percent.

Amanda Covington, Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs with the Utah System of Higher Education, says the board is happy with the funding they got from legislators this year given decreased state revenues, but didn't receive enough to take care of facility improvements.

"We need to do a much better job of communicating to the legislature that we won't have a need this year or maybe two years from now, we will have infrastructure needs for several years, because higher education has about 60 percent of square footage of the state-owned inventory," said Covington. "We have buildings that were built over 60 years ago, and they are going to need repair and remodeling."

With the tuition increases, students at the University of Utah will pay $128 more per semester, while students at SLCC will pay about $60 more per semester. The board also approved student fee increases statewide that average to about 3.5 percent.

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