Minnesota State is raising tuition on students at its two-year colleges after holding costs flat over the last seven years.
The public higher education system’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized 3 percent tuition hikes for its 30 colleges and six of its seven universities.
Student leaders lambasted the budget proposal, which was made public just hours before the Board of Trustees voted 10-3 to approve it. Full-time college students will pay an extra $144 next year and university students $231.
“I’m extremely opposed to this,” said AbdulRahmane Abdul-Aziz, a student trustee. “A hundred dollars is a lot to students.”
Minnesota State officials told lawmakers they’d need a $246 million increase in their biennial funding in order to avoid a tuition increase. Lawmakers awarded $81.5 million and capped tuition increases at 3 percent; only St. Cloud State University was approved for a higher increase.
“It wasn’t enough state funds to enable us to avoid a tuition increase,” Chief Financial Officer Laura King said.
Asked by trustees what it would mean to freeze tuition again, King said it would cost around $100 million over the biennium and cause a “very substantial disruption” to the campuses, which are counting on the tuition hike.
Lawmakers have been relatively generous with Minnesota State in recent years. Next year, for the first time since the 2008 Great Recession, the system will rake in more revenue from state appropriators than from tuition-paying students.
Still, many schools are facing financial stress.
Enrollment system-wide fell by 2.3 percent this year. Leaders expect another 1.6 percent drop next year, which would mark the eighth consecutive year of losses.
King said a Minnesota State study about five years ago found the price of college did not have a meaningful impact on enrollment. Trustees voted Wednesday to collect more information on that subject.
King said the schools have been re-prioritizing their spending in order to better serve students. They’ve helped under-prepared students get into credit-bearing classes faster and made it easier for students to switch schools within the Minnesota State system while staying on track to graduate.
“I think our presidents and their leadership teams have done a terrific job responding to changing student demands … in a very flat resource environment,” King said.
The system’s budget assumes a 3 percent increase in compensation costs, which will depend on contract negotiations. That figure was 2.7 percent last year.
Despite the tuition hikes, most low-income students at Minnesota State schools will see their net tuition costs shrink because federal Pell Grants increased and the Legislature last month poured another $18 million into the state grant program.