Regents halt tuition increase

Last Tuesday, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia decided against a mid-year tuition increase for students at Georgia College & State University and other institutions in the state.

The Board reduced the $68.7 million cut to $64.8. One-time fund sources totalling $44.5 million will be to fill part of the remaining budget gap, while institutions will be responsible for the remaining $20.3 million.

Though GC&SU’s portion of the cut has not yet been finalized, it’s expected to be about a third of the original $1.07 million figure.

GC&SU President Dorothy Leland said she’s pleased with the result, but emphasized the long road ahead.

“I’m relieved that our students won’t face a mid-year tuition increase and that we most likely can avoid layoffs,” Leland said in a press release Tuesday afternoon. “However, most of the dollars found to fill the budget hole this year are temporary, which means that the University System will need to come up with a plan to deal with this cut on a permanent basis.”

In a press release distributed Wednesday, Chancellor Merideth echoed Leland’s response.

“This is a mixture of both good news and bad news. On the one hand, we feel quite positive about mitigating the immediate financial impact a mid-year tuition increase would have had on our students. Still, we know the one-time cost cutting solutions we have identified are frankly stop-gap measures that only temporarily solve our problems. We will have to find these dollars from other sources for our FY 2006 budget,” said Meredith.

Leland explained the source of the cuts in an open forum led by herself and Student Government Association President Loman Martin.

“Last year, the [Georgia] General Assembly decided it didn’t have enough money to fund all the things it wanted to fund, and in order to fund the things it wanted to fund, it decided to shift the final payroll of this fiscal year to the first day of the next fiscal year. What it would have meant for state employees was that we would have received our paychecks one day later.” Leland said.

“Imagine you have 12 payments in a year for an automobile or stereo that you had to make, but someone allowed you, because you needed a little more money for something, to delay one of those payments for another year.”

However, Leland said that after examining a few crucial factors involved in the decision to shift the payroll, Governor Sunny Perdue reversed the decision and changed everything, leaving state universities with a $68.7 million cut.

Before the recent budget adjustments, Leland said a combination of workforce reduction and raising tuition could help combat the problem.

SGA President Martin and his administrative staff met students from around the state at the Capitol last Saturday to present a statewide petition protesting the increase.

“Our petition made a difference because it allowed Governor Purdue to realize students would react to his poor decisions in budgetary situations,” Martin said. “State elections come up in two years and he might of thought the voter pool [of students] might not reelect him.”

GC&SU officials will develop a strategy to deal with the remaining cuts in the next few days.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 15 2004. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry