Regents board approves tuition increase, hike in fees
CHATTANOOGA (Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) — As a Middle Tennessee State University senior and the husband of a student, Matthew Guy said another tuition and fee increase means one thing for his family: more debt.
The Tennessee Board of Regents voted Friday to raise tuition 14 percent this fall and increase other fees paid by its more than 180,000 students. The 18-member board accepted without discussion the recommendation made a day earlier by its finance committee.
The combined increases in costs for students range from 14.3 percent at the University of Memphis to 19 percent at Cleveland State Community College.
Guy, 28, said he paid fee increases both of the two years he attended Pellissippi State Technical College in Knoxville. The Board of Regents increased tuition by $192, or 7.5 percent, for Guy’s junior year at MTSU, where he transferred to study public relations.
Beginning with the fall semester, students on the Murfreesboro campus will pay an additional $564 a year, a 16.5 percent increase.
Guy, who is from Houston and served five years in the Coast Guard before starting college, said he hopes to avoid half of the annual increase by graduating in December.
Financial aid for his military service helps pay for his schooling. Guy also has a job at Middle Tennessee Medical Center and his wife works.
“One of the biggest problems with constantly raising tuition, for Shannon and me, that is just more and more debt that you keep putting yourself into,” he said. “It’s kind of like you are fighting to survive to get through school and when you do finish school you are going to have to deal with some of the choices you made.”
Guy described the couple’s debt from college costs as “thousands of dollars.”
“When people are looking at tuition costs, it’s not just the cost of going to school. You have to have a place to live … eat and transportation,” he said.
Guy said the continuing increases are hurting Tennessee by making schools unaffordable.
“There are some people in the state who do not see that education is an investment,” he said.
At the other Regents universities, in-state tuition and fees will increase:
— $530, or 14.3 percent, at the University of Memphis.
— $484, or 14.8 percent, at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville.
— $550, or 15.9 percent, at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville.
— $528, or 15.9 percent, at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City.
— $536, or 16.5 percent, at Tennessee State University in Nashville.
Fees will increase by $325 a year, or 18.7 percent, for students at community colleges, while students at technology centers would pay an additional $239, or 18.3 percent.
Despite a $57.3 million cut in the state appropriation for the Regent campuses in the fiscal year that begins Tuesday, the increased student costs help support a $1.6 billion system budget that is up $52 million, or 3.5 percent, from this year.
Chancellor Charles Manning said the increases would allow campuses to offer more than 1,570 additional course sections, although 121 employees would be laid off and 311 vacant jobs, 94 of them faculty positions, would be eliminated.
Many of the new course sections would be taught by part-time instructors, board spokeswoman Mary Morgan said.
Tuition at most of the system’s four-year campuses increased by 7.5 percent last fall and by 15 percent the previous year.
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On the Net:
Tennessee Board of Regents: http://www.tbr.state.tn.us/
Tennessee Higher Education Commission: http://www.state.tn.us/thec/