The University is one step closer to seeing an in-state tuition hike.
Student Council passed a resolution Dec. 3 to recommend that the Board of Visitors raise in-state tuition for the 2003-2004 school year.
Resolution FR02-11, sponsored by College Rep. Brandon Possin and Council President Micah Schwartz, was presented Monday to Leonard Sandridge, executive vice president and chief operating officer.
Ultimately, the decision to increase tuition rests with the Board.
Schwartz justified the resolution in saying educational quality supercedes tuition costs.
"Our education is suffering because of state negligence," Schwartz said. "No one wants a tuition increase, but students would prefer higher tuition over a continuing decline in education and found it necessary to increase tuition."
Schwartz added that he did not want an increase in tuition to jeopardize the socioeconomic diversity of the University. The resolution requests the University to continue to provide full financial support to students.
Until an increase last spring, in-state tuition had been frozen for six years, but out-of-state tuition has steadily risen.
In October, the Board issued a $385 mid-year tuition surcharge to all students.
The feeling of Council's representative body was that if the trend continued, out-of-state students would pay exorbitant amounts while in-state tuition remained static -- not allowing the school to meet the "budget crunch," according to Council Executive Vice President Ronnie Mayhew.
The tuition difference has caused "an unfortunate gulf to emerge between in-state and out-of-state students," Schwartz said in a letter to Sandridge.
It is now time for in-state students to take on a larger portion of the burden, Schwartz said.
Faculty Senate Chairman Michael Smith commended Council for the initiative.
The faculty is "grateful to the Student Council for understanding this and supporting the entire University, not just the faculty, for raising tuition," Smith said. He added that "the economy of the state of Virginia does not support students in a manner comparable to other institutions and doesn't meet its own guidelines for support of students."
Last October, an official assembly of several hundred University professors passed a similar resolution to raise in-state tuition.
Council's resolution cited both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California at Berkeley, the University's closest peers, as analytical tools to gauge the state's funding for individual students.
"The idea that in-state students pay less because their education is subsidized by the state is hardly the case," Schwartz said."In reality this becomes clear when we compare per pupil expenditures of Virginia to per pupil expenditures of North Carolina and California."
State funding will drop to $8,860 per-in-state student in the coming academic year, at UNC and Berkeley, $24,178 and $22,309 of state funding was given for each in-state student, respectively.
"The members of the Student Council are students and came to U.Va. because of the cheap tuition and no one wants to see tuition increased," Schwartz said. "However, we believe if forced to choose between low tuition and a fine education, we choose a fine education."
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