University of Missouri-St. Louis students should expect to pay more for tuition beginning the 2011-2012 school year. Governor Jay Nixon met with state university leaders in late August to discuss the future of college tuition. In the Higher Education Summit meeting the governor told the leaders “Missouri’s budget will suffer serious challenges.”

In 2008, governor Nixon negotiated with higher education leaders about tuition. The agreement was if the universities froze tuition for in-state undergraduate students then in exchange the universities would preserve 95 percent of its budget with a five percent budget cut.“The first year, the governor did not cut our budget. And last year the agreement was that they would only cut our budget by 5.2 percent if we did not raise our tuition so we did not raise tuition and they cut our budget by 5.2 percent,” Glen Hahn Cope, Vice Chancellor, said.

“Freezing tuition for two consecutive years has helped our students stretch their education dollars. When you couple that with financial aid opportunities — UMSL students receive nearly $125 million in financial aid annually from the university and other sources — the value proposition is unbeatable.” Thomas George, Chancellor, said in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

The next fiscal year, however, the governor could not promise a 5 percent cut. As a matter of fact there will be more cuts along with the 5 percent. A part of the 5 percent cut included the hiring freeze. The university had to lay-off several employees in various departments to eliminate some positions that helped meet the budget goal. “So to cut 10, 15, 20 percent would mean we would not have anyone teaching because we would not have the money to pay them therefore, we probably will have to [increase] tuition, we really don’t want to. We would have to [try to increase] it as little as possible,” Cope said.

Cope says the budget committee is calculating the numbers now to figure the amount of the increase. From 1999 to 2008 UM-St. Louis has increased its tuition each year with an average of 6 percent.

“The state faces a likely budget gap of $450 million because of slow revenue growth and the lack of federal budget stabilization money that helped balance the books over the last two years.” Linda Lubbering, Missouri state budget director, said in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Nixon also cut $50 million from the $82.8 million provided to the Access Missouri Scholarship program in which Lubbering says, “That money isn’t likely to come back.”

Nixon highlighted several expectations for the state university leaders to do in which Cope says UM-St. Louis is already doing. One expectation is to increase enrollment and retain students. “Any student that has a certain number of credit hours and was not registered last spring they’ve been called this summer. We’ve contacted them to find out what would it take [for them to return] in some cases we put together a financial package.”