Several regents skeptical of U tuition hikes

Security guards greeted visitors to Thursday's Board of Regents meeting, which is generally a tame, bureaucratic affair.

But this time, they were ready for student protests against tuition hikes included as part of the University of Minnesota's proposed budget that regents were publicly reviewing for the first time.

While there were no student protests, several board members said they were reluctant to sign off on passing costs to students.

"I'm just very concerned about doing everything we can to control tuition increases," said new board member Ken Powell, chairman of General Mills.

University President Eric Kaler pointed out the state Legislature budgeted about a third of what the U had requested.

"We did not receive an adequate amount to enable us to freeze undergraduate resident tuition," Kaler said. "So, we are asking for an increase ranging from 1 percent to 3 percent on the Twin Cities campus."

Here are the nuts and bolts of the recommendation:

Undergraduates from Minnesota, or a state with a reciprocity agreement, would see a 3 percent tuition bump at the Twin Cities campus and a 1 percent bump at the other system schools in Duluth, Morris, Crookston and Rochester.

For non-resident, non-reciprocity students, tuition at the Twin Cities campus would jump 10 percent. That's more than $2,000 a year.

Non-resident tuition at Duluth would jump 5.5 percent.

At the same time, most faculty and staff would receive a 2 percent raise. High-level administrators in Kaler's office would not get an increase.

Trish Palermo, the incoming president for the Minnesota Student Association, isn't thrilled with the proposal.

"So many students are struggling to pay for the basic necessities that come along with being a student at the U and beyond that," Palermo said. "The amount of students who are graduating with thousands of dollars in debt, it's just not a good spot for students to be in.

"A tuition increase negatively impacts students all across the board."

Regent Steve Sviggum, also new to the board, said the university could cut compensation increases and employees through attrition.

"I think we could avoid any type of an increase in tuition this year," he said. "I think it would be a good message to the Legislature. It'd be a good message to students. It would be a good message to the state of Minnesota."

Regent Richard Beeson disagreed, saying the board has been much more fiscally responsible than they're given credit for, especially as the U has faced reduced state funding for a long time.

"We've got ongoing increases despite our cost cutting. We have investment needs and we have growing government compliance costs," Beeson said. "How are we supposed to fund 100 percent of those needs under a resident freeze tuition scenario when the only remaining source of new revenue would be the state, which is only a 17 percent contributor to begin with?"

Despite the talk of the U's need to cut, there are places where it's preparing to spend more.

Lauren Mitchell, a student representative on the board, applauded increased funding for student mental health services and sexual misconduct prevention.

But she raised broader concerns with how the budget is presented, saying it's hard to track down what's spent where.

"That means we can't place responsive investments like what we're seeing in student mental health and sexual misconduct prevention into context," she said. "I spent some time with the budgets of our peer institutions.

"I can look up the total budget for counseling services at the University of Michigan, but not at the University of Minnesota."

The board will vote on the budget at a meeting on June 20. The board accepts online and mailed comments about the budget through Tuesday.

Correction (June 9, 2017): An earlier version of this story misidentified Ken Powell's current role at General Mills. He is the chairman. He stepped down from his role as CEO of the company on June 1.