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Board of Regents to review state's higher ed tuition and fees
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LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Last year, facing an unprecedented budget crisis, higher education officials tweaked Nevada's tuition and fee policy to allow for higher prices at the state's public colleges and universities.
Now, the higher education system's governing Board of Regents is abandoning the policy altogether and starting over.
The Board of Regents voted Thursday to suspend the current policy while it studies a new plan.
"This is not a tweaking," said Dan Klaich, the state's higher education chancellor. "It's a complete change in policy."
Traditionally in Nevada, tuition and fees at the state's public colleges and universities have been determined by a simple formula, which used regional averages to determine prices here.
When the policy was changed last year, the old one was called complicated and unwieldy. The new policy essentially did the same thing as the old one but tied tuition increases in Nevada to national trends instead of to regional prices.
Klaich said the problem with both of those approaches is that they do not take into account the needs in Nevada's higher education system.
"Tuition and fee policy in my opinion should be written in a way that addresses the goals of the system and the goals of the state," he said.
Those goals include getting more people to go to college and increasing the number of graduates statewide.
A new tuition policy will be studied by a committee that Klaich is putting together. It will be called the Committee to Study Access and Affordability. The committee will include representatives from the colleges and universities, students and parents.
Its purpose will be to review current fees and recent increases while considering income levels in Nevada, financial aid trends in Nevada, and trends in affordability, including college participation by low-income students.
Klaich said the committee should be ready with a set of recommendations before the next budget is due to state lawmakers a year from now.
Recommendations will be about how tuition and fees are set and about financial aid policies.
Aimee Riley, the chairwoman of the Nevada Student Alliance, an umbrella group of student body presidents, said she would press for student input.
She said students see the committee's work as having the potential to improve pricing in some areas, such as the individual course fees and other fees charged by the institutions. She said that money should go directly to supporting students, not to less direct interests.
But, she said, students are also worried that the entire endeavor is simply an excuse to raise tuition. She said they would fight that outcome.
"That's where we stand at this point," she said.
Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.
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I guess we need to ask people to volunteer to run Nevada's higher education system. Salaries and bonuses are only good for the Wall Street CEO's that almost ruined the United States financial system. Yet another example of ZERO critical thinking skills by the ignorant.
You're right about one thing. It appears that I *was* "making s#@t up" about Smatresk. In fact, according to TransparentNV, in 2010 the Imperial President of the Empire was paid:
a base salary of $339,996
benefits worth $35,405.66
and a TOTAL compensation package worth $401,402.66.
Oh, and BTW. In that same year lawyer, NSHE "Chancellor" and former paid lobbyist Klai$h made $356,468.61!
I can certainly see why NSHE is experiencing "an unprecedented budget crisis".
Paying Dem NV. Dina Titus to go away as a UNLV professor was not cheap...ALL students MUST help pay her off with higher and higher tuition and higher and higher fees. She is entitled you know...shame, shame, shame on your Ms. Titus.
Once again n7v is just making s#@t up.
Last year, [NSHE] tweaked Nevada's tuition and fee policy to allow for higher prices
Remember that series of articles about how $280K Smatresk was planning to charge a tuition differential for so-called "more expensive" programs? The general idea was that since science programs have labs which cost more, science majors should pay higher tuition.
What a complete load of BULL.
The constitutionally chartered mission of the University of Nevada is to train our next generation of applied scientists. Indeed, the University was endowed with funds sufficient to give a FREE RIDE to each one of those geeks. Then, now, and ALWAYS.
Hey, parents of UNR/UNLV science undergrads! Are you listening?
The non-science programs are the more expensive ones, in that they need to be funded out of the General Fund, ie from *current* taxes and/or USER FEES (tuition). *Those* programs should be paying the most. $800/credit sounds right.
Athletics, with its $500K Head Coaches, $150 Assistants, junk departments for jock majors, recruitment violations, scholarships for (often out-of-state) jocks who couldn't care less about education, and so forth is clearly the most expensive program in the University. I can't even put a price tag on what those guys should be paying.
The crooked Regents must have gotten the message. But that doesn't mean they'll do the right thing and implement a free ride policy for science majors. More likely, they'll follow the lead of the University of California and begin admitting *more* (in both absolute and relative terms) foreign students, ie those who pay out-of-state tuition rates.
NSHE continues on its relentless course to become an entitlement program for the rich.