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• Our proposal reflects a great deal of public input, including that of the Ad Hoc Committee on University Funding, which was chaired by a student and composed of students, faculty and staff. There were more than 30 public presentations on this topic, attended by more than 1,500 students, faculty and staff.
• No one ever wants a tuition increase, but KU is seriously underfunded relative to our peer universities and relative to any other benchmark for universities with a teaching and research mission. Our students, and the people of the state of Kansas, can't afford for that to continue. They deserve a first-rate university at KU.
• This board asked us last fall to develop plans that would use tuition dollars to enhance educational quality at our institution. The proposal we've submitted achieves that goal. And it does so without closing our doors to any student based on the cost of tuition and fees.
• Under our proposal, we will distribute approximately $2.2 million in KU tuition grants during 2002-03, more than doubling the state-funded need-based aid currently available to KU students. This is the first time we've included a significant increase in student financial aid in our tuition proposal.
• This is on top of the approximately $128 million in student financial aid and scholarships already made available to KU students each year from all sources (federal, state, KU Endowment Association, other).
• We expect that the KU tuition grants will go a long way toward keeping KU affordable for those students who are most in need.
• For resident undergraduates, tuition and fees total about 25 percent of the average cost of attending KU. So these changes represent an increase of roughly 5 percent in a student's overall budget (tuition and fees, room and board, books, travel, personal expenses).
• Despite the proposed increase, resident undergraduate tuition and fees at KU will still be less than at comparable universities in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and most other states. (The annual difference would be $611 at Nebraska-Lincoln, $707 at Iowa and $1,798 at Missouri-Columbia.)
• Increased funding provided by the tuition increase will support a variety of initiatives to preserve academic excellence at KU. The suggested uses reflect the priorities spelled out in the advisory report of the Ad Hoc Committee on University Funding. Examples include:
* upgraded classrooms
* additional faculty in areas of increasing enrollment and new discovery
* larger stipends for graduate assistants
* expanded access to technology
* stronger minority recruitment and retention
* enhanced library services
* faster introduction of online registration and related services
* operating expense increases for academic departments
* additional support staff for student services in academic units, such as advising.
• The tuition changes proposed for 2002-03 do not necessarily commit KU or the Kansas Board of Regents to any future course of action. While we have projected a five-year plan, future tuition increases will depend on the overall level of state funding for Kansas universities.
• The bottom line is this: If the state provides moderate increases in support for KU, this tuition proposal would help bring us closer to the average funding of our peers and create a university of national excellence for our state and our students.
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