University of Tennessee President John Petersen explained where and how money raised by the 13-percent tuition and fee increase would be spent at the Board of Trustees meeting last Thursday.
According to figures presented by Petersen, it would require a minimum 9.3 percent increase to maintain current levels of service at UT.
The difference between a 9.3 percent-increase and the approved 13-percent increase is $4,316,000.
Without the increase, the university would not be able to afford hiring two new faculty members in the College of Arts and Sciences, $150,000 of a recommended $550,000 in library acquisitions to maintain and improve services, $85,000 of $200,000 for graduate teaching stipends, $800,000 in salaries for hiring 12 new faculty members due to increased enrollment and $770,000 for scholarship money for the neediest incoming freshmen.
During the finance and committee meeting Thursday, board members questioned Petersen on his budget proposal.
“If we were to choose not to go beyond that, then there would be no improvement in quality in education at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville?” D. Lynn Johnson asked.
William B. Stokely III, chair of the finance and administration committee, asked similar questions.
“If we’re at 9.3 percent for status quo and add half a percent to that, then for each year ahead of us, we’re looking for 10 percent just to stay even?” he asked.
Petersen provided a concise reply to both questions.
“That is a fact,” he said.
Petersen also spoke about the demand the increased student enrollment as a result of the HOPE lottery scholarships placed on the university.
“The big issue we’re going to see in Knoxville is when the 600 additional sophomores and the 600 additional freshmen will rise this coming fall, become… 1,200 juniors and seniors and we get into classes that are no longer general education, then we have no faculty to teach them,” Petersen said. “That’s going to be the difficult area.”
A lack of state funding and a state-mandated pay increase for university faculty and staff has placed an added burden on the university to find the money.
State appropriations are down 12.6 percent from what they were in 1996, from 62.6 percent of the UT-system budget to 50 percent. The tuition amount, as a percentage of the overall budget, has likewise increased, from 21.4 percent to 33 percent.
The state mandated pay increase will require the university to raise approximately $3.3 million.
Curtis Sanderfer, Student Government Association president, spoke about his feelings regarding the tuition increase.
“Obviously I’m disappointed as a student, but I understand we’re in a budget crisis and we need money,” he said.
Figures for the tuition increase were compiled by The Daily Beacon from the fiscal year 2006 UT budget.
