Tying UNM Tuition Hike To Aid Urged

If University of New Mexico regents increase tuition next year, 20 percent of the revenues raised should be used to help needy students pay for school, an advisory group has recommended.

The group of administrators, faculty members and students making recommendations on tuition and fees is asking regents to put 20 percent of the money generated from an increase into a fund for students who qualify for financial assistance. UNM administrators have recommended a 3.75 percent tuition hike.

President David Schmidly, in his final budget proposal, backs the potential 20 percent allocation of revenue from a tuition increase for student aid. Regents will deliberate on the recommendation today, when they are expected to review UNM’s proposed 2012-13 budget. Final action will take place next month.

The idea to allocate revenue from an increase came after the tuition and fees team found comparable universities use more of their own money to help needy students. The data members analyzed came from a survey conducted by the CollegeBoard Advocacy and Policy Center. The survey found that four-year institutions that accept up to 70 percent of their applicants, like UNM, usually use between 57 percent and 68 percent of aid for need-based students. The figure at UNM is 26 percent.

“We’re doing this now because we value access, so we want to keep UNM affordable to students who normally may not be able to afford it, and to try to keep student debt down,” said Terry Babbitt, associate vice president for enrollment management.

About $2.4 million of the school’s annual $9.1 million institutional aid fund goes to students who need financial assistance, while the remainder goes to merit-based scholarships.

Babbitt said UNM gives out less aid partly because there are so many other funding sources for students, such as the lottery scholarship. He added: “I think that a lot of that has to do with the same things we always talk about, that tuition is really affordable so we don’t have tuition that requires discounts.”

The proposal, one of several made by the tuition and fees team, would essentially amount to more than $650,000 for next year’s institutional aid budget, Babbitt said. The money would cover the demise of a federal funding program that allocated about $561,000 a year to the aid budget, Babbitt said. That program has been discontinued.

UNM’s institutional aid budget comes from several sources, including endowment funds, instruction and general funds and the state. The tuition and fees team hopes UNM will eventually allocate 34 percent of its aid budget to needy students.

Babbitt said allocating more money to needy students is a no-brainer.
— This article appeared on page C1 of the Albuquerque Journal