SAINT PAUL, MN – Yesterday, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Board of Trustees approved a new operating budget that will result in tuition increases for students attending four year universities. Under their new budget, undergraduate students attending any of the seven four year universities in the MnSCU system would see their tuition go up by 3.4%. The tuition increases are on top of an average room and board increase of 5.5% over last year. Average tuition for undergraduate university students will increase to $7,016. Full time graduate students would also see their tuition increase by 3.7%. Students attending two year colleges in the MnSCU system will not see tuition increases.
The tuition increases approved by the Trustees are a result of the legislature's inability to continue to keep tuition frozen, despite having a budget surplus of $2 billion. Earlier this month the University of Minnesota also announced a tuition increase due to legislative inaction.
“In 2015, MnSCU had tuition freeze as the core of its budget proposal,” said Rep. Pelowski. “Today we shouldn’t be increasing a regressive tax like tuition. We should be repairing the wound that was delivered to higher education over The Great Recession. We should be telling the parents and students that they’ve had enough. That if you get a degree in the State of Minnesota you don’t have to mortgage your life for the next ten to twenty years. That you might be able to have a family, that you might be able to buy a house. And that you can return to Minnesota the gifts that were given to you in the higher education systems of this state.”
While the increased tuition will be offset by increases in the State Grant Program, it will only offset costs for students who are eligible to receive State Grants. MnSCU also noted three risks to their budget assumptions: accurately predicting enrollment, employee compensation, and a structural imbalance.
Rep. Gene Pelowski, Jr. is the DFL Minority Lead on the House Committee on Higher Education and represents Winona.