Tuition rates to rise as expected

Topeka ? As expected, tuition and fee rates at Kansas University will climb 14.3 percent for undergraduate students from the state.

But the decision, made Thursday by the Kansas Board of Regents, didn’t come without dissent. For the first time during the current five-year plan to double tuition at KU, two regents – Donna Shank of Liberal and Deryl Wynn of Kansas City, Kan. – voted against KU’s tuition increase.

“(Middle-class Kansans) are concerned they can’t send their children to college based on what they’ve saved and what they’ve been able to liquidate,” Wynn said.

Shank also voted against the tuition increase at Kansas State University. She said a variety of factors led to her decision, including the affect on students and the benefits to the universities.

This is the fourth year of the regents’ “tuition enhancement” plan. Regents asked universities in 2002 to propose five years of tuition increases that would lead to improvements at the schools.

At KU, the increases have paid for a variety of improvements, including new faculty, technology, salary increases for student workers, teaching assistants and faculty and a variety of other things.

New rates for tuition and fees, first proposed in May, will be $2,706.50 per semester at KU for undergraduate Kansas residents.

But some regents fear the increases are too much. Lew Ferguson of Topeka said a letter sent to the regents summed up many concerns held by working Kansans.

“I think this is a voice coming from a lot of middle-class rank and file people who see the opportunity of higher education for their children slipping from them,” Ferguson said.

Next year’s increases in tuition and fees at other universities range from 5.2 percent at Fort Hays State University to 9.8 percent at KSU.

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway said he wasn’t surprised there was dissension among the regents.

“We’ve said all along that nobody wants to raise tuition, but conditions make it necessary,” Hemenway said. “The thing I feel positive about is our students understand this is being done to preserve the quality of the University of Kansas. They’ve clearly indicated they support that.”

Regent Dick Bond of Overland Park said he, too, didn’t want to increase tuition. But he said the increases were necessary unless the state increased funding to higher education.

“The buck stops here,” he said. “We find ourselves in this dilemma, and find the higher education system in a dilemma. We have to keep its quality, viability and competitiveness.”