The State Board of Higher Education voted unanimously today to reduce previously approved tuition rates for resident undergraduates, effective this fall, when the Legislature provided an additional $15 million to the Oregon University System’s budget on the last day of the legislative session.
In June the board approved average tuition increases of 4.8 percent for resident undergraduates attending the seven OUS institutions and one branch campus. With the infusion of $15 million, the increase is lowered to 3.5 percent for these Oregon students for each of the two years of the biennium.
“We are grateful to the governor and Legislature for this additional investment, which helps make our public universities more affordable for current and in-coming students,” said Melody Rose, interim chancellor of the Oregon University System. “Our hope, which I know we share with Oregon students and families, is that this is the beginning of a rebalance in the state-student share of college costs.”
Twenty years ago, the state covered about 70 percent of the cost of educating a student in the OUS. Today, students are shouldering the 70 percent, with the state covering less than 30 percent. Oregon ranks 44th in per-student funding of higher education at $4,649 per student, compared to average national funding at $7,294 per student.
The Legislature, in adopting the budget for the OUS, directed that all seven campuses and one branch campus (EOU, OIT, OSU, OSU-Cascades, PSU, SOU, UO and WOU) may not exceed a base rate of an average of 3.5 percent at any individual campus in any given year of the 2013-15 biennium. For students choosing the Tuition Promise program at WOU, rates of increase over the prior cohort may not exceed 5.7 percent in any given year. These limits on tuition apply to all campuses for the next two academic years (2013-14 and 2014-15) regardless of the outcome of any governance changes that may be implemented during the biennium.
Board members thanked the governor and Legislature for appropriating the additional funds for the tuition “buy-down” and also for the 2013-2015 combined operating and capital budgets, which represent the highest budget increase since before the recession.
- by the Oregon University System