The last step in the tuition and fee setting process, before the April State Board of Education meeting, took place Thursday with a presentation on the proposed 4.7 percent tuition increase from Executive Director of Planning and Budget Keith Ickes.
Hannah Sandoval | Argonaut
Keith Ickes, UI executive director of planning and budget, speaks about the tuition and fee increase at an open forum held Thursday afternoon. The 4.7 percent proposed increase will be voted on by the Idaho State Board of Education in April.
Dean of Students Bruce Pitman said the purpose of the open forum was to collect feedback and answer questions from students concerning the proposed tuition and fee increase.
“It’s one more step in the process in getting feedback on the proposal that we have set forth,” Pitman said. “It’s an opportunity for those who have been involved with the process to make comment, as well as the student body.”
Fewer than 20 people sat in the Horizon Room of the Idaho Commons including student leaders, faculty and staff members. Only one student not associated with ASUI, GPSA or SBA attended the forum — Rachael Studebaker, a senior in graphic design.
“Art and Architecture is increasing their fees too,” Studebaker said. “I decided to come and ask questions, because I wanted to know why tuition was being increased again.”
Ickes broke down the general education budget — roughly $180 million of the $370 million budget UI runs on.
“We’re talking really about the piece of the budget that relates to education and the education functions of the institution — that’s instruction, basic administration, basic university functions,” Ickes said.
The general education budget is mainly made up of funds allocated to the university from the state, $83 million, and the funds received from tuition, $56 million. The remaining portion of the budget comes from land-grant endowments.
Ickes outlined four challenges the university hopes to work through with the anticipated 4.7 percent increase in tuition for Fiscal Year 15.
UI’s primary challenge is ensuring a 2.2 percent increase in Change in Employee Compensation (CEC), which has already been approved by the SBOE. Ickes said the state has agreed to fund part of the increase, but is leaving the rest to UI to fund.
“The 2.2 percent salary increase comes to about $2.2 million,” Ickes said. “The state proposal is that 1 percent of that is permanent and 1 percent would be a one-time bonus, but we are going to propose that the entire 2.2 percent is permanent.”
Ickes said UI falls short in terms of salaries compared to peer institutions, so the CEC has been a budget priority for years.
“Six years ago, our faculty salaries were at 92 percent of our peer average, we’re now at 84 percent,” Ickes said. “So we come from 92 — which isn’t great — to 84, which is not at all good. The salary gaps are roughly, for full professors, about $20,000 less than our peers.”
In addition to CEC, Ickes said another challenge for UI is keeping up with the rising costs of medical expenses.
“We don’t use the state insurance plan. We are self insured here and that’s to our advantage,” Ickes said. “The state is providing us with a little over 1 million and helping to cover the cost again — like salaries they help cover a portion of the costs and in this case they cover a larger portion. In fact we’re planning on adding $350,000 to that to meet the plan costs of the university.”
Ickes also said the university has obligations to fulfill that can be categorized as either mandatory or decision based.
Mandatory obligations include paying the costs for rising utility bills, promoting faculty and paying down the inflation in library resources. Ickes said decision-based obligations include funding the second-year law program in Boise, an increase to athletics and campus safety initiatives.
Finally, the other challenge the university faces is capital replacement. But Ickes said the university does not use tuition to try and solve capital replacement and will use other means to fill the gap.
Ickes said he encourages students, faculty and staff who have questions or comments regarding the proposed tuition and fee increases to email [email protected], so feedback can be taken into consideration before the SBOE makes its decision at the fee hearing in April.
Amber Emery can be reached [email protected]