Campus works to keep student costs down
Released: August 18, 2003
UW-Whitewater is working to minimize the financial impact on students during a time of double-digit tuition increases caused by the state budget crisis. The total increased costs of attending school and living on campus will be lower than the 17 percent tuition hike suggests.
Tuition for 2003-04 is $3,622.80, up 16.7 percent from the previous year to offset $150 million of the total $250 million cut to the UW System. However, when the costs of room, food, textbooks and student fees are added along with tuition, the total overall increase from the 2002-03 fiscal year will be 9.3 percent, according to Vice Chancellor for Administration James Freer.
“It is very challenging for campuses statewide to come up with a budget that works,” Freer said. “Our goal was to make sure the experience the student is receiving here is no less, regardless of the dollar figure.”
According to Freer, the university has been very aggressive in holding down costs that would impact rates. For example, Freer said the meal plan rate increase is only 3.5 percent, one of the lowest in the UW System. Increases in room, textbooks and segregated fees are also among the lowest.
The UW System established an upper threshold for fee increases of 3.9 percent. Those fees include student-organized activities, athletics, housing, meal plan and programs within the University Center. UW-Whitewater stayed under that figure by raising fees 3.5 percent. The plan, however, likely comes with little or no staff pay increases and open positions that could remain vacant or be eliminated.
Freer said many of the UW System schools either chose to or could not stay under the threshold. Some institutions, UW-Green Bay and UW-Eau Claire for example, have large building projects that require significant increases.
Barbara Jones, Assistant Chancellor for Student Affairs, said her department has made a conscious effort to hold the line on student fees. “It is difficult to know at this point if the students will be impacted by the cutbacks until we get into the actual operations when the students return,” Jones said.
UW-Whitewater’s loss in the state budget cuts is $2.6 million, a figure that causes university officials to “think out of the box” when designing a new budget. Freer said Chancellor Jack Miller continues to remind administrators, faculty and staff “that the university has lost a large chunk of money and personnel and is probably not out of the woods just yet. We can’t continue to do business as we did before, it won’t work. We still have approximately the same amount of students and less money so it’s not business as usual.”
- Craig Coshun ,npa@uww.edu
