Students from Colorado should plan for an 8.6 percent tuition increase at
The increase would amount to $504 annually for a full-time student. While it won’t be official until the FLC Board of Trustees meets June 3, all the trustees involved in a budget teleconference Tuesday morning endorsed the increase. Their endorsements came after more than an hour of discussion about the flat nonresident tuition recommendation by staff.
“In-state tuition has doubled since the last nonresident increase, and the impact is being felt in different parts of the college,” Trustee Steve Short said. “I’m OK for this year, but I don’t think this has satisfied my concern long-term, and I think this is an issue that will circle back around.”
Because most, if not all, of the other public four-year institutions in Colorado are also expected to raise tuition to the level allowed in the state budget, Fort Lewis will continue to be the second least expensive school for residents, said Michele Peterson, associate vice president of finance and administration. Metropolitan State University of Denver is the least expensive.
Maintaining the nonresident tuition rate isn’t because Fort Lewis is concerned about price sensitivity – the college has the lowest out-of-state tuition and fees of any public four-year college in the state, just over $17,800. Most other colleges are in the $19,000 to $21,000 range, with the University of Colorado Boulder at $34,000.
“This is political,” said Steve Schwartz, vice president of finance and administration at FLC. “The Joint Budget Committee originally proposed capping our nonresident tuition at a zero percent increase, but Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, said it wasn’t fair to single out a single institution with that cap, and the JBC would have to trust the Board of Trustees to do the right thing, whatever that means.”
At issue is the Native American tuition waiver. The state reimburses the college for those students who qualify, and about half of the out-of-state students are Native Americans. The cost to the state has been steadily increasing, up about $1 million this year and projected to increase another $1 million next year as that population continues to grow at the school.
“Long-term, we just can’t keep avoiding the nonresident tuition increase,” Trustee Tom Shilling said. “We’ll kick it down to next year, but we need to work with the folks in Denver to get them to understand that eventually we have to increase it to make our budget stable.”
The trustees approved room and board increases at their February meeting, leading to a one-year total cost change of 4.2 percent for the 1,400 or so students, primarily freshmen, who live on campus.
Student fees will remain the same for the 2016-17 year, but student government is expected to request an increase for the next year when its contract with Durango Transit expires. Fee increases for some individual courses, most notably art and science, were approved previously.
The money raised from the tuition increase will go to raises for faculty and exempt staff. Classified staff, whose pay schedule and raises are determined by the Legislature, will not get a pay increase next year, but the college plans to create a one-time incentive program for those employees. The trustees have set a priority of keeping faculty and exempt staff compensation at a level with peers in higher education, and the raises will keep them within the 100 percent range of those peer salaries.
abutler@durangoherald.com
2016-17 freshman class will be larger
While Fort Lewis College still feels the effects from its enrollment dip that started in 2013-2014, it is looking forward to an increase of 2.7 percent in the incoming freshman class in August. And more students mean more tuition revenue – important for the college’s budget.
While some of that is attributable to the college’s engagement of Royall and Co. to conduct student outreach, it will require more analysis, Admissions Director Andy Burns said.
“Their campaign reached out to 40,000 students, but about 15,000 came from our college fairs and visits to high schools where they followed up,” he said. “It would be interesting to see how many of those students would have applied anyway. The remaining students who looked like they would be a good fit for Fort Lewis came through their research team.”
The contract with Royall began in January 2015. This year, the FLC had a full recruitment season with the enrollment-management consultant.
“Last year, we identified 141 students as coming through Royall,” Burns said, “and this year, 295 came from the Royall campaign.”
Burns is meeting with Royall personnel next week, but won’t know until the college’s budget is approved in June whether he will have money to contract with the company next year.
The FLC Budget Office has run numbers to determine the return on investment from this year’s contract, said Michele Peterson, associate vice president of finance and administration.
“The most conservative measure is an ROI of 162 percent for the fall 2015 class,” she said.
With those numbers, Burns said, he is “cautiously optimistic” the board will approve the funding for another year’s contract with Royall.
abutler@durangoherald.com
