University System of Georgia keeping tuition flat even amid slash in state funding

May 16—The University System of Georgia's Board of Regents voted Tuesday not to raise tuition rates for the 2023-24 academic year at 25 of 26 institutions, even after lawmakers approved a $66 million slash in USG's state funding in March.

It is the fourth year in a row that undergraduate and graduate tuition will remain the same at most of USG's institutions.

Middle Georgia State University will be the only exception. In a news release Tuesday, USG wrote that the college is in "the second of a three-year plan to align its undergraduate tuition with other universities in the same academic sector."

"We have been a good deal for Georgia," USG Chancellor Sonny Perdue said in Tuesday's news release. "With the board's decision today, we remain a great deal. Still, our institutions face strong financial challenges. We're reaching a tipping point at which we need to mitigate inflationary pressures in order to maintain the quality of education."

Perdue said he looks forward to working with Gov. Brian Kemp and lawmakers to restore state funding.

The USG has a total yearly budget of $9 billion, including state money, tuition and fees and other revenue, according to the Associated Press.

In March, University of North Georgia President Bonita Jacobs called the $2.54 million loss in funding "concerning" in a letter to faculty and staff as the college faces a decline in enrollment. When combined with a 10% cut in total state spending in 2020 and a $13 million cut caused by a drop in student enrollment, UNG expects its budget to shrink by about $24 million by 2025.

"This new and unexpected budget cut is concerning," Jacobs wrote in March. "The severity of the budget cut passed by the legislature this week will further impact teaching budgets, staffing and student services as the university seeks to reduce costs."

UNG officials could not immediately be reached for comment late Tuesday afternoon on USG's decision to keep tuition flat.

The average cost of undergraduate in-state tuition and fees in Georgia is $6,266, which will rise to $6,290 next year, according to AP. Costs will range from $3,306 at Swainsboro-based East Georgia State College to $11,764 at Georgia Tech.

At UNG, an in-state undergraduate student taking 12 hours per semester will pay just over $5,056 per year in tuition and fees, according to the university's website.

UNG's enrollment fell by 8.6% from fall 2019 to fall 2022, from 19,748 to 18,046 students.

Jacobs wrote in her March letter that the decline in enrollment is attributable to a "strong local labor market, the effects of the pandemic on student enrollment, and national decreases in the number of traditional college-age students."

"At UNG, those trends have been particularly evident in losses of students seeking associate degrees," Jacobs wrote. All the while, she said, UNG is paying more for employee health insurance, and its utility costs have increased by more than $1 million.

Lawmakers who voted in favor of the $66 million USG cut have pushed back against critics, saying USG's 26 public universities can make up for the budget shortfall by using the roughly $500 million in cash they have on hand, called carry-forward funds.

UNG, for example, had $7.6 million in carry-forward funds at the end of 2022.

"I'm not saying that that's going to make everything better for UNG, but I also will say that clearly their carry-forward costs triple the cuts USG has told them they will take," Senate Appropriations Chairman Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, told The Times in March.

This year, the Board of Regents eliminated a mandatory Special Institutional Fee that students had been charged systemwide since 2009, lowering student costs last year by 7.6% across USG's 26 institutions, according to AP.

USG is the third lowest for median in-state undergraduate tuition and fees at four-year institutions among the 16 states that make up the Southern Regional Education Board.

Although many Georgia students receive other types of financial aid, more than 40% now borrow to pay for college with some students borrowing more than $6,000 on average, according to AP.

Students who receive Georgia's lottery-funded HOPE scholarships will get a boost next fall after lawmakers ordered the Georgia Student Finance Commission to cover full tuition for recipients who graduate high school with a B average and maintain that average in college.

HOPE Scholarships do not cover fees.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.