Posted on: Saturday, November 20, 2004
50 percent rise in tuition forecast for UH
| • | UH flood damage could exceed $25 million |
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
Resident undergraduate tuition at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa could jump by 50 percent by the end of the decade if it is raised to meet national and regional averages, as interim President David McClain said yesterday is virtually certain.
In other action yesterday, the UH Board of Regents:
• Heard that federal research grants in the first four months of the year have reached $108 million, more than half of the $198 million for all of last year. To date, the combined research and training grants are $167 million in the first four months, compared to a total of $330 million last year.
• Approved streamlining the UH administrative structure to save $876,000 and eliminate three executive positions, add one, and abolish five other positions.
• Approved a one-year contract extension with Cassidy & Associates, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm, but will take a closer look at the contract at that time, and do a broader two-step process in the next round of bidding. • Approved the appointment of Gene Awakuni as chancellor of UH-West O'ahu and Vance V. Roley as dean of the College of Business Administration. Awakuni will be paid $151,440 annually, Roley $302,016. • Deferred action on the appointment of Jon Matsuoka as dean of social work, asking for clarification from attorneys regarding the search process. "Our tuition levels are not up to where they need to be," McClain said at a meeting of the UH Board of Regents. "They're not up to the national average. We would like, over the next several years, to raise them."
That would mean an eventual increase at Manoa of about $1,700 annually to bring the $3,465 annual tuition up to the national average of $5,218 for resident undergraduates at public colleges.
Annual increases at UH-Hilo and the community colleges would be set at a lower Western regional average, and would bring Hilo up from $2,440 now to $2,973 by 2010. Also, community colleges would go from $1,387 now to $1,846 by 2010.
The timing of an increase is flexible, with the administration planning to bring a more exact schedule to regents in January and then hold hearings during the spring to reach a final decision by May or June next year.
McClain emphasized that any increase in tuition will be accompanied by a proportional increase in financial aid for needy students.
He also said tuition could rise slower if the Legislature adds between $30 million and $40 million to the university's operating budget for each year of the new biennium.
The university is in the midst of a five-year phased tuition increase of about 3 percent annually that is set to expire in 2005-06.
Over that time, it has raised the cost of a year of undergraduate study at UH-Manoa from $3,024 for Hawai'i residents at its start to $3,504 by 2006.
While UH administrators have been in the habit of calling UH one of the best educational bargains around, an almost 18 percent increase in student numbers over the past four years has sent enrollment to levels above 20,000 students this semester at Manoa alone, taxing the capacity of dorms, faculty, classrooms and money.
State financial support for UH has dipped to about 45 percent of the UH budget in the past few years, compared to more than 50 percent as recently as 1989, and administrators are increasingly looking at ways to supplement diminishing state money.
The university counts heavily on tuition for part of the approximately $600 million it needs annually to operate, a figure that will grow to about $650 million by 2010.
Along with tuition increases for residents, the university is also looking at increasing tuition for nonresidents and closing loopholes that allow nonresidents to pay the much lower resident tuition after they have been here a year.
He said a systemwide increase would be phased in over four or five years, likely beginning in the fall of 2006, as the university copes with a tight budget and increasing enrollment.
FEDERAL RESEARCH GRANTS AT $108M
