Floyd nixes tuition plan
Student leaders opposed the plan, and others questioned its feasibility.
Published Dec. 2, 2005
UM system President Elson Floyd said on Tuesday that he would not recommend to the UM system Board of Curators a proposal to lock students' tuition for the length of their degree programs. Without Floyd's recommendation, it is not likely the board will adopt the policy.
Instead, Floyd discussed with the board at its Thursday meeting in Kansas City a plan to restrict tuition increases to the rate of inflation, which is controlled by the Consumer Price Index and the Higher Education Price Index.
Floyd said the system was only effective as long as the growth of state funding matches inflation, according to a news release.
Craig Kleine, chairman of the Associated Students of the University of Missouri, a student-lobbying group, said he was happy with the decision.
"Guaranteed tuition would have given too much of a financial burden on the freshmen," Kleine said. "That's not fair."
UM system spokesman Joe Moore said several factors, including ASUM's concern, led Floyd to forgo recommending the policy to the university's governing board.
"Students were concerned the tuition would be too great for incoming freshman," Moore said.
Because administrators could not raise the tuition of current students under the locked-rate tuition plan, many student leaders feared that incoming freshman would have to bear any tuition increases.
Other Missouri residents also questioned whether the plan was feasible.
"Business leaders wondered if it would be too difficult to project state appropriations over a four-to-five-year period," Moore said.
He said state appropriations had dropped during the past five fiscal years.
Rep. Allen Icet, R-Wildwood, a member of the Missouri House of Representative's Special Committee for Higher Education Funding, said that though he liked the idea of locked-rate tuition, he respected Floyd's decision.
"From a high level, it appeals to someone like me, but in times of a tight budget, I understand how that plan could be difficult," Icet said.
Floyd said his decision on the plan would depend mostly on the approval of Missouri residents.
"I have said from the beginning that guaranteeing tuition was not an idea that I would support without Missourians' stamp of approval," Floyd said in the news release. "While some, especially parents, liked the idea of guaranteed tuition as a way to budget with greater confidence, I more frequently heard challenges to the concept."
In a description of the alternative tuition model he presented to the Board of Curators on Thursday, Floyd wrote that it would promote stability and accountability because tuition would reflect any changes in state appropriations. "If state appropriations increase less than the HEPI, then the increase in tuition must make up the difference," Floyd wrote.
At the Board of Curator's October meeting, two of the four UM system chancellors — from the UM-Rolla and the UM-Kansas City — expressed their opposition to the proposal. MU officials also opposed the plan.
At the same meeting, ASUM officials also said they opposed the plan. Floyd first asked the Board of Curators to consider the locked-rate tuition plan in June. He spent several months traveling around the state gathering citizens' opinions about the plan.