After a $15 million budget cut by the Iowa Legislature, the Board of Regents, State of Iowa, voted to increase tuition for all University of Iowa resident undergraduate students by 3 percent. The Board of Regents met June 6–8 in Cedar Falls.
The Iowa Legislature adjourned April 22 after finalizing a budget for next year that reduces the UI’s state appropriation level to roughly what it was in fiscal year 1997.
Concerned that this decrease in state appropriations is harming the quality of education at Iowa’s public universities, the Regents in May proposed to raise tuition by 3 percent for UI resident undergraduates. The June 8 vote confirms that proposal, increasing tuition for UI resident undergraduates by $358, compared to the 2016–17 academic year. (That figure includes the 2 percent increase the Regents approved in December 2016.)
The Regents also approved increasing tuition by 3.8 percent for all nonresident students and all graduate or professional student classifications, in addition to the 2.5 percent increase approved in December.
The tuition increases will generate an estimated $16.51 million for the UI, making up for the more than $15 million state reduction. The new revenue will fund university priorities such as increasing need-based financial aid, supporting the faculty vitality initiative to retain high quality faculty, and other goals included in the UI Strategic Plan 2016–21.
Earlier this year, UI President J. Bruce Harreld publicly discussed raising base tuition and fees over the next five years to the median of the UI’s peer group, rather than where it currently sits at the bottom. This five-year plan would help students and families predict and plan for costs.
As shown in the figure above, last year the UI’s tuition and fees were among the lowest in its peer group. Image courtesy of the Office of Strategic Communication.
Last year, the university established a new collaborative and values-based budgeting process that empowered deans and unit leadership with greater control over their budgets. This resulted in an average salary increase of about 2 percent for faculty and 1.6 percent for nonbargaining professional and scientific staff.
Deans and unit leadership will meet later this month to finalize the fiscal year 2018 budget. UI leadership will finalize and submit the university’s budget for approval by the Regents in late June or early July.