CU Tuition Rise Story

Samantha Lauckner, a full-time Chinese student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, uses scholarships, grants, loans and works full time during the school year in order to pay tuition. During the summer, Lauckner, 25, works about 72 hours per week to save for the next school year.

“When I first started attending, I thought tuition would be more doable. Then when attending and also having to pay full on living expenses, I realized damn this school costs a lot,” she said.

Over the last ten years, the Board of Regents at the University of Colorado has approved tuition increases of an average of 52.7 percent for in-state students at the Boulder campus. Tuition increases because of state mandated employee raises, school improvements and decreases in state funding. The increase in tuition affects who applies to and attends CU Boulder, how much debt students incur, and how much students can enjoy their college experiences.

According to CU Vice President of Communications Ken McConnellogue, in the 1980s the state paid 67 percent of students’ tuition, and now it pays 25 percent of tuition. He also said that Colorado is 48th in the nation in state funding for higher education. This is the most important reason for the increase in tuition over the last ten years.

According to the American Council on Education, “Colorado has reduced its support for higher education by nearly 69.4 percent, from $10.52 [billion] in fiscal 1980 (and a peak of $13.85 [billion] in fiscal 1971) to $3.22 [billion] by fiscal 2011. At this rate of decline Colorado appropriations will reach zero in 2022.” Of all of the states, Colorado has had the highest percent of state funding decrease in the last four decades.

One prominent reason for the decrease in funding for higher education is the Gallagher Amendment, which passed in 1982. The Gallagher Amendment maintains a constant ratio between tax revenue from residential and business property. The amendment affects higher education funding because it drastically cut local residential property tax revenue, and schools are funded by a combination of this local revenue as well as state revenue. However, the state could still increase state funding for higher education to make up for the loss of funding from local revenue.

This changed when the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) passed in 1992. TABOR affects higher education funding because it places strict limits on how much revenue the state can keep and how much it can spend. After this passed, the state could no longer make up for the lack of local funding for higher education with state funding, because there was not room for it in the strict budget. The combination of the Gallagher Amendment and TABOR drastically reduced funding for higher education, and universities in Colorado have had to make up for that by raising tuition.

Alexis Harrigan, education policy adviser to Governor Hickenlooper, said “I think we are underfunding education… because of TABOR and Gallagher.”

Richard Maestas, chief financial officer in the Colorado Department of Higher Education, said that the Great Recession that started in 2008 is another important reason for the decrease in funding to higher education. This is because the state had less revenue to work with, so it allocated money to areas such as K-12 education or Medicaid, and did not prioritize higher education. He said that funding for higher education is still trying to catch up after the recession.

Accounting for inflation, from the 2006-2007 school year to the 2016-2017 school year, School of Business tuition rose 48.9 percent, School of Engineering tuition increased 54.6 percent, School of Arts & Sciences tuition rose 48 percent, School of Music increased 48.2 percent and the School of Journalism, which the College of Media, Communication, and Information (CMCI) includes starting in 2015, rose 63.8 percent.

If Darden DeNuzzi’s mother didn’t help her pay for college, she said that “it would be a lot harder to go here, so that might actually heavily persuade me to rethink my options for college.” The 20-year-old sophomore CMCI student said that if tuition keeps rising at this rate she would not be able to attend the CMCI school at CU ten years in the future.

Working students often feel as though they can’t enjoy their college experiences as much because they don’t have time for many extracurricular activities due to working so many hours. Many wish that they didn’t have to work as much so that they could have more fun in college. Lauckner allows herself only 3-4 hours a week to go on one date with somebody, otherwise she focuses on school or work. She believes that if she had more time to join clubs or do other activities, she would get much more out of her college experience.

Although the university charges the most for tuition out of all of the public institutions in Colorado, it strives to provide a high quality education, and that requires more expense. CU purchases educational equipment, builds new and maintains old campus buildings, and attracts well educated, qualified, and quality faculty with its higher salaries. According to U.S. News & World Report, the university is ranked number 39 in best public universities in the nation.

Maestas, McConnellogue and many CU regents believe that higher education pays off in the long run, because people with college degrees make an average of $1.5 million more over their lifetimes than people without a college degree. The national average of undergraduate debt is about $29,000 and CU Boulder’s is $27,522. This lower average happens for a variety of reasons; such as more financial aid from parents or from the school. Although in the short run for a young student this seems like a lot of money, according to the numbers in the long run a college degree is well worth it.

Furthermore, CU Boulder students pay off their debt more than the national or even Colorado average. The default rate of paying back student loans is 11.3 percent nationally, 11.5 percent in Colorado, but only 3.1 percent at CU Boulder. McConnellogue said that the university believes the default rate is lower because fewer CU students take on debt and less of it, they get jobs when they graduate and loan repayments are a more reasonable percentage of the graduate’s income.

The Board of Regents at CU is in charge of approving university budgets and student tuition. Linda Shoemaker, the vice chair of the Board of Regents, believes that none of the regents want to raise tuition, but that it is a “balancing act.” She also said that the university has figured out ways to improve efficiency to keep tuition costs as low as it can. For example, using more of the space in already completed buildings rather than building new ones. McConnellogue said that over the last three years, the university has saved about $112 million by increasing efficiency.

Some students feel that the university could be even more efficient with its spending. For example, DeNuzzi believes that the buildings on campus don’t need as much maintenance because she’s here to learn, not to look at pretty buildings. Lauckner believes that a student can get a similar education at another university, especially one out of the country, but pay much less in tuition. Many students feel that tuition should be cheaper, and the regents have the hard job of trying to keep it as low as they can to keep as many people happy as they can.

Shoemaker said “We do not raise tuition lightly. We understand how difficult it is…. We really do our best to keep tuition as low as we possibly can.”

May, 2018