In a unanimous vote early this afternoon, the University of Oregon board of trustees approved a plan to increase mandatory fees and tuition for graduate and nonresident undergraduate students.
The vote means that a nonresident student will pay about $1,000 more for a full load of 45 credits next academic year. Student fees, for programs like ASUO and the EMU, will increase by $49, or 6.9 percent, for all full-time students.
The plan also means that some graduate students will pay up to 15 percent more in tuition next year.
“There’s no question that these are daunting numbers,” university Chief Financial Officer Jaime Moffitt told trustees as she briefed them on the university’s financial outlook. “Even if things go really really well, there’s a gap there that we’re going to have to figure out how to fill.”
The board’s move comes after months of discussions with the Tuition and Fees Advisory Board, which made recommendations to UO President Michael Schill for his final proposal to the board. Many of the discussions surrounded the increasing costs the university will face next year.
TFAB will begin considering resident undergraduate tuition rates at a meeting on Friday, March 8, according to an email to the group. TFAB will recommend rates to the president in May, and the board plans to finalize resident tuition at their May 23 meeting.
No one spoke at the meeting’s public comment period for or against the proposal to increase tuition; however, 91 students commented on the proposal through a survey the president sent to students in February.
According to comments obtained by the Emerald, most of those students didn’t support the proposed increase.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Schill told trustees that the university’s financial outlook for the next year is “sobering,” particularly the university’s projected budget shortfall for the next year. Schill told board members that university administrators will have to consider making budget cuts across campus to meet the needs of the budget situation.
“It’s going to come from two places. I’m not going to run the university in a deficit for two years. It’s either going to come from the students or it’s going to come from reductions in staffing. When you’re 80 percent people,” Schill told board members, referring to the fact that most of the university’s budget goes to employee salaries, “those are the places we have to go.”
TFAB cochairs Jaime Moffitt and Kevin Marbury present tuition recommendations to the board of trustees at their Mar. 5, 2019 meeting. The board approved a 2.97 percent increase for nonresident undergraduates (Zack Demars/Emerald).