Cap is proposed on part of tuition that pays faculty

Higher education leaders are trying to take some of the financing burden off students, pushing for a more student-favored funding split for faculty raises.

The proposal would cap the share of faculty compensation paid from tuition dollars at 25 percent, a mark that was the standard until lean budget years and surging enrollments forced that portion up toward 35 percent.

The other 65 percent of faculty compensation is covered by state tax dollars.

The 25 percent cap could save students up to $3.6 million statewide in tuition dollars based on a projected 3.5 percent compensation increase for faculty.

"You are locking students into a pattern of ever increasing tuition rates by applying compensation to their existing ratios. It's going to be very difficult to unwind that unless you put in some degree of stability," Higher Education Commissioner Rich Kendell said Wednesday in a Higher Education Appropriations subcommittee meeting.

Students at schools like Utah Valley State College stand to gain the most from the proposal, which was pitched at last year's Legislature but fizzled out in the waning days of the session. At UVSC, students currently pay 50 percent of any faculty compensation increases, whereas students at Utah State University cover only about 28 percent of those costs.

A 25 percent cap on tuition dollars for compensation could save UVSC students close to $1 million in mandated tuition increases.

"From 2000-2003, I realize we had a lot of growth and we had trouble with budget. What we ended up doing was taking students on the margin and funding it with tuition," said David Clark, R-Santa Clara.

Although the subcommittee took no formal action on the proposal Wednesday, Kendell said he's hopeful this year's pitch won't lose its momentum. If last year's Legislature had approved the 25 percent tuition split, students statewide would have saved close to $4 million and may not have seen the average 11 percent tuition increases.

Roughly 3.5 percent of the tuition increases at each of the state's nine schools was necessary to meet compensation increases.

"This does not infuse a single dollar more into higher education; it just changes the source," Kendell said.

Not all legislators at Wednesday's meeting agreed with scaling back the portion of student dollars, including John Dougall, R-American Fork, who said the state should not be subsidizing the costs at all. Instead, he said ,students should be shouldering 100 percent of the cost of an education but that education should be more affordable.

"If tuition were to drop by $3 or $4 million, that means taxes rise. That would make it harder for some people to put food on their table in exchange for subsidizing these students. That is unfair," he said.

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