Tennessee Board of Regents may not follow UT System in capping tuition increases to 6 percent

The Tennessee Board of Regents may not follow the University of Tennessee System in capping tuition increases at 6 percent, officials said.

“The University of Tennessee is starting at a higher base than where we are with comparable universities,” said Bob Adams, vice chancellor of Business and Finance at the Board of Regents, who spoke to the Finance Committee on a conference call today.

A 6 percent tuition increase at UT Knoxville would take tuition from $5,120 to $5,427, a cost that is still 16.7 higher than the $4,652 tuition at the University of Memphis, a Board of Regents university, said Mr. Adams.

If tuition increases are capped at 6 percent at Board of Regents two-year colleges and universities, three of those schools would not recover from state higher education cuts, said Dr. Charles Manning, chancellor of the Board of Regents. Those negative numbers will be compounded with faculty promotion, fuel and facility costs, he added.

Chattanooga State Technical Community College’s total revenue would increase 1 percent with a 6 percent tuition increase, according to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.

Dr. Manning urged board members to consider Gov. Phil Bredesen’s publicized request for them to minimize tuition increases and take steps similar to the UT System.

“Their circumstances may be slightly different in some way,” Gov. Bredesen said in a May 23 story in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “But I certainly would expect the Board of Regents to do the same kind of internal examination of their expenses and trying to find if there are some areas that could be reasonably cut rather than simply passing on these costs to students and their families, and I expect them to do that, and I believe they will.”

See tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press for complete coverage.