Regents vote for zero percent increase to undergrad tuition

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UNM’s Board of Regents on Friday approved a zero percent increase in undergraduate tuition and student fees for the next school year.

The regents passed the motion unanimously at a meeting in the Student Union Building that afternoon.

Board of Regents President Jack Fortner said he feels satisfied with the result of the vote. He said the board addressed students’ concerns effectively by not raising tuition and fees for fiscal year 2015.

“The students all semester have been saying zero percent increase, and they’ve actually been saying it for a year,” he said. “We listened to them. It was a tough decision, but it’s our way of showing that the priorities are the students.”

But students in some schools at UNM will see an increase in their tuition, as the regents passed each school’s differential tuition requests. Differential tuition costs are extra tuition costs added to the general per credit hour tuition costs at UNM. These are implemented by every UNM program.

Undergraduates at the Anderson School of Management, for example, will now face a differential tuition of $10 per credit hour, according to a document distributed at the meeting. Anderson graduate students’ differential tuition will also increase by $10, from $173.70 to $183.70 per credit hour for New Mexico residents, and from $180.10 to $190.10 for out-of-state students.

According to the document, graduate students at the School of Architecture and planning will face a $24.88 per credit hour increase in differential tuition, which increased the amount from $49.75 to $74.63 per credit hour. Graduate students at the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences will now also see a differential tuition of $150 per credit hour.

At the meeting, the regents decided to increase compensation for faculty members by 3 percent. Staff member will also have a 2 percent increase in compensation next fiscal year.

The regents also approved a 4.6 percent tuition increase for resident students and a 4.9 percent increase for non-resident students at UNM Los Alamos. Tuition and fees in other UNM branches will stay the same.

Associated Students of the University of New Mexico President Isaac Romero said he is glad to see the regents vote against a tuition increase.

“We worked hard with the (Student fee Review Board) to make sure our students are taken care of fairly,” Romero said. “The students don’t have to worry about anything—certainly undergraduates—for sure.”