Home > MetNews

Tuition hike on horizon
Projected enrollment increases still leave Metro's budget short
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

If approved by the Metro Board of Trustees, a 5 percent tuition increase for Metro students will go into effect this fall. The increase would amount to approximately $3 million in additional revenue for the college next year.

One of the factors contributing to the proposed increase in tuition is the state-mandated increase in salaries and health insurance assistance for state employees, Metro President Stephen Jordan said, adding that the budget allotted to all of higher education this year doesn’t even cover these mandatory increases.

This year Metro was allotted $3.4 million of the $48 million allotted to the overall higher education budget.

“In order to fully pay the mandated cost increases, some part of tuition increases are going to have to go to that, just to keep the institution whole,” Jordan said.

The increase doesn’t include covering other parts of Metro’s budget, such as adding new staff, increasing salaries beyond the mandated increase, or adding any additional student services, he said.

“Even if we raise the tuition 5 percent, it’s going to be a very marginal revenue in the big scheme of things, and so we’ll have to set some priories about which (programs) we’re going to put our money to,” Jordan said.

Jordan also made clear that Metro’s increases over the years have been less than those of any other four-year institution in Colorado, which shows the board’s concern for students, but also means the college forgoes that revenue permanently because the increases are accumulative.

“Our trustees believe – and so does our president – that tuition should be kept very low. But we don’t want to keep it low to the point where we can’t provide services,” said Natalie Lutes, finance director for Metro.

“There are all these things that we continue to do without,” Jordan said. He pointed out that there are not enough full-time faculty members in the classrooms, programs for students, a big enough information technology section, or enough people conducting the business routines of the college. These are all problems because the college continues to defer the opportunity to increase tuition, he said.

“I think there becomes a point where you can no longer afford to keep deferring those decisions. You’ve got to step up to them sooner or later. So I think the likelihood of a tuition increase that will approach – if not be at – the 5 percent is much greater this year than it has been in the past,” Jordan said.

At an April 4 Board of Trustees meeting, trustee Alex Cranberg, who heads the finance committee, pointed to a projected 17 percent increase in enrollment this fall and suggested that this would bode well for Metro’s coffers.

“The increases in student admissions, if sustained, would certainly present a very favorable financial picture for us next year. … It suggests that we might be able to get by without even having to have as high as a 5 percent tuition increase,” Cranberg said. “I would certainly urge us to be as conservative as possible when increasing tuition.”

Metro is the only Colorado higher education institution that is showing enrollment growth, Jordan said. And because the total amount of state money that is dedicated to higher education is fixed, Metro ends up having to subsidize many of its students. Jordan added that the net result of this is that the college receives significantly less money per student than other schools.

“The only way to try to minimize this is to maximize our tuition money,” he said.

Though a concrete plan has yet to be developed, one option Metro is looking at is deferring the increase for students who are enrolled in 13 or more credit hours and spreading the increase out among the rest of the student body, Lutes said, adding that the point behind this was to increase retention and graduation rates.

There are 5,000 students enrolled in 10 credit hours, and it would be these students that the increase would target in order to encourage them to graduate sooner, Jordan said.

While an increase in enrollment at Metro might appear to be a good sign for the college’s revenues, Lutes pointed out that it creates another problem in and of itself.

“If enrollment goes up we have to hire more people to teach here,” she said, explaining that Metro has already reached its maximum efficiency regarding its student/teacher ratio.

The tuition increase is absolutely necessary and there is probably enough support on the board of trustees to pass the increase, Lutes said. But, she pointed out, there are some members of the board who will be hard to convince because they believe that Metro’s money trouble is just a matter of being more efficient.

“We really can’t be more efficient and provide a good education,” Lutes said. “We’re still doing it, but much more and we’re going to tip the scales.”