Trustees Approve Budget, Tuition For New Fiscal Year

The Board of Trustees last week adopted an operating budget for the 2003-04 fiscal year of $117 million that includes a 5 percent tuition increase and a student fee increase ranging from 2.0 to 2.5 percent, for a total cost increase to students of approximately 4.7 percent.

The budget is based on projected enrollment growth of 5 percent. It assumes that the legislature will further reduce its appropriation to Metro State by an additional $2 million, on top of the $6.4 already reduced. In total thus far, the allocation from the state has been reduced to $31.7 million, which is $13.8 million less than the allocation at the beginning of the 2002-03 fiscal year.

Included in the budget is $500,000 to hire additional tenure track faculty and $400,000 for replacing full-time temporary faculty with full-time tenure faculty, and $700,000 for increasing part-time faculty pay. The budget also calls for using available one-time funding to replace $1 million in financial aid funding that was lost during this session's legislative action.

Mike Barnett, vice president of administration and finance, said the budget reflects the college's mission to retain and recruit strong faculty and to ensure Metro State remains accessible to students. "With the projected enrollment growth and tuition increase we should be able to fund our priorities, at least minimally," Barnett said.

Under a plan created by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, state colleges and community colleges were prohibited from increasing total costs to students (the combination of tuition and fee increases) by more than 6 percent. For research institutions - the University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Colorado State University and Colorado School of Mines - the cap was set at 9 percent.

Trustees indicated that if the budget situation gets worse - if funding from the state is reduced by even more than the college has already planned for, or if enrollment doesn't increase as much as anticipated - they could consider another tuition increase for the spring semester.