ASU seeks tuition hike to help with budget cuts

ASU President Michael Crow says he expects the university to lose more than $100 million in funding once state lawmakers have eliminated Arizona's billion-dollar deficit.

Tuition hike likely at ASU due to state's woes

That equals the cost to educate about 15,000 Arizona State University students a year, Crow said.

"Luckily, we have tuition," he said, "otherwise we'd be out of business."

The Arizona Board of Regents is scheduled to set next year's tuition and fees for the state's three public universities during its meeting Thursday.

Crow and the presidents at the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University are requesting that students pay significantly more for their education to cover part of the schools' funding losses.

ASU sliced $22 million from its budget during an earlier round of cuts in August because of the state's economic woes. The university is planning for an even larger reduction come January, when the Legislature reconvenes and must find ways to eliminate an estimated $1.3 billion shortfall due to faltering tax revenue.

Crow has proposed increasing tuition and fees for current ASU students next school year by 5 percent, or $280, to $5,939.

New students face a much higher price increase under Crow's proposal. Incoming freshmen and transfer students would pay almost $6,200, a 10 percent hike or $588.

"That's definitely a big jump," said Tyler Klein, a Mesa Community College student planning to transfer to ASU next year to major in pre-law.

Klein's tuition at MCC is less than $2,000 a year.

The price of an ASU education has nearly tripled the past decade. However, Crow said the higher price has not priced out most students.

If it had, "we'd have nobody coming," Crow said. "We have record enrollment, record applications, record diversification, record access, record retention, record graduation. All those things are at the highest level they've ever been."

In 2003, after the state cut higher education funding, the regents approved a $1,000 tuition increase. But 14 percent of that increase, and of each subsequent increase, went to financial aid for low-income students.

Crow said those dollars have made it so that students whose families' income is $45,000 or less pay no tuition.

Klein said he would have few options to pay for ASU's higher costs.

"Just taking out student loans," said Klein, who graduated from Mesa High School in 2005. "And that's really on the back burner, because you want to stay out of debt as much as possible, especially with the economy the way it is today."

Despite the higher prices, ASU's enrollment has grown exponentially.

Nine-thousand more students attend the university this semester - 67,082 in total - than did in 2003, ASU enrollment data show.

But such increases might not continue should future budget cuts be as large as Crow envisions.

Last month, ASU's College of Nursing and Healthcare Innovation announced it is reducing its future enrollment by 80 spots, a 26 percent cut. And Crow's tuition proposal asks that nursing students pay an additional $1,500 a year.

"I like to think of them as temporary reductions while we are dealing with this budget situation," said Bernadette Melnyk, dean of ASU's nursing college.

The permanence of those cuts will depend on Arizona's economy, which is struggling through a historic slump in several key industries that has created the state budget shortfall.

ASU is the state's largest line item in the budget that lawmakers have full control over.

Crow compares the current financial problems to a "level-three hurricane," something the university can likely withstand so long as it does not worsen.

"The university has never been through a level-three hurricane, that anyone can remember," Crow said.