Iowa State University’s enrollment has escalated since 2009, while the state’s appropriation to the school has plunged. That’s the message interim President Ben Allen presented to the Board of Regents tuition task force today in Ames.
Allen says he has no reasonable expectation that state support will increase in the next few years, while on campus overcrowded labs and lecture halls, frozen faculty and staff salaries and deferred maintenance all are calling out for attention. To address these and other needs, Allen is proposing a 7 percent increase in tuition each of the next five years.
“Overall, inadequate resources have precluded us from expanding capacity to address our growth, both from an employee and an infrastructure point of view,” Allen says. “We realize it took us 10 years to reach this imbalance, and it will likely take us more than five years to correct it.”
But Allen says the university will work hard, in tandem with its foundation, to continue support for students and families that can’t afford the full ticket price.
“We are sensitive to the burdens that (increase) will place on families,” Allen says, “but two things. First, we hope that the state will continue, and do better in the future, so we can back off of some of those increases. And secondly, we do have scholarships and financial aid that will help mitigate, moderate, some of those increases.”
The tuition task force of the Board of Regents asked ISU, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa to propose five-year tuition plans. UNI made its proposal earlier this week. The University of Iowa’s plan is scheduled to come out Monday.
