Tennessee Board of Regents will consider restructuring how it charges for classes in the face of more budget cuts from the state at its scheduled Dec. 4 meeting at ETSU.
TBR will review proposed revisions to the assessment fees and tuition, which means full-time students could end up paying more next year.
“As a general matter, yes, the cuts to state appropriations for higher education are requiring us to develop a new business model, and changing how we charge for tuition and fees is a part of that,” TBR Director of Communications Mary Morgan said. “It gives us a great deal more flexibility.”
TBR staff will recommend removing the current cap for tuition and fee at 12 semester hours and assess the per hour rate for all credit hours that a student enrolls for each semester. The change would go into affect June 2009.
In other words, instead of full-time students paying a flat fee for classes over 12 semester hours, those students will have to pay per hour.
Currently full-time students pay the same amount whether they take 12 hours or 18 per semester. If the proposed change passes TBR, students will pay more, if they take more classes.
MTSU President Sidney McPhee started a new campaign, “Positioning the university for the future,” last week in response to recent budget cuts from the state government.
McPhee expects the university will have to cut a total of $20 million to $22 million from the budget before 2010.
The cuts include an expected $10 million to $12 million decrease in state funding in the next academic year. These cuts are on top of the university losing more than $6 million in state funding over the summer with another $4 million in October.
MTSU started fiscal year 2008-2009 with more than $100 million in funding from the state, that number has since dropped to a little more than $91 million of the university’s total budget of more than $345 million.
In the first and second rounds of budget cuts this year, McPhee said the budget was balanced with few cuts to academics by reductions in other areas.
In order to prepare the university for the cuts, McPhee has formed four “strategic work groups” and a steering committee.
These committees will hear suggestions from students and faculty on how to eliminate waste, consolidate current resources and generate new funding sources for the future, as well as look at cutting university jobs and possibly future classes offered.
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com.
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