Afterthoughts on UNM’s fascinating meeting Tuesday

A friend who is kind enough to follow me on Twitter told me that today’s regents meeting reminded her of Congress.
That’s a pretty accurate assessment of the nearly 8-hour long meeting Tuesday, at which regents approved a new tuition model, an accompanying double-digit hike in cost, more money for athletics, faculty and staff raises and fairly drastic changes to the school’s retiree health benefits plan.

My brain kinda hurts.

Also hurting: my editors, for space in the newspaper, which means I had to keep the tuition story that’s going in tomorrow’s paper really short.

Here are some of the bigger observations I didn’t include:

1. There was a lot of negotiating going on. Last year, regents set the budget over two full board meetings. Presumably, all the haggling was due to everything being condensed into one long meeting.
Let’s take, for example, the tuition hike. UNM in its budget proposed a 13.5 percent increase in tuition for students who take only 12 credit hours, or what would amount to $820 extra dollars. For those who take at least 15, the increase would be 8 percent.
Included in increases was the unblocking of tuition, which means UNM would charge per credit hour and not per block of credit hours. But the breakdown of fees per credit hour also would impose on students an increase in cost, and regents took issue with that. So, instead of reducing the amount UNM wants per credit hour ($235.25 per hour for less than 15; $166.89 more 15 or more), President Bob Frank and co. at the last minute suggested decreasing the amount students pay in fees from $50.99 per credit hour to somewhere between $45 and $48.
Regents were convinced.

2. One huge topic that really factors in to this new push to graduate students in four years is the number of credit hours required to graduate, which at most universities is 120 but at UNM is 128. This wasn’t touched on a whole lot in Tuesday’s meeting, but administrators have been talking about it for a while. They have been vocal about their desire to reduce the required 128 to120 (although some programs would not be able to do so). But such a reduction would be a long and laborious process, and would probably require state approval, I’ve been told. It could be months and months before that happens.
Still, it’s a key part of the conversation. Even if a student took 15 hours both semesters, it would be impossible for them to graduate in four years without taking summer courses. It’ll be interesting to see what the university does next on this front.

3. Athletics: In his bid to get more funding for his department, athletics director Paul Krebs pointed out that student athletes graduate at much higher rates than average students. He later emailed me a document that shows 60 percent of student athletes from the 2006 cohort class graduated in 6 years. For non-athlete students, that figure was 45.8 percent.
Krebs, whose views clearly are supported by most regents, says athletics is not adequately funded.
Including state funding, instruction and general funding and student fees funding, UNM athletics gets about $2 million less than any of the schools in the Mountain West Conference, Krebs said.
“We run a championship program. Our student athletes graduate,” Krebs said. “We care lees about where the money comes from. We believe we deserve more funding.”
Members of the Student Fee Review Board don’t necessarily disagree that athletics should be funded more, but adamantly oppose that that the extra funding come from student fees.
Student leaders Caroline Muraida, an undergrad, and Marisa Silva, a graduate student, were visibly upset when regents overruled their recommendation to keep student fees for athletics as is.

That’s it for tonight. Thank you for reading, and please follow me on Twitter: @astridgalvan