Tuition freeze up in the air as Iowa lawmakers dicker over budget

IOWA CITY - Legislators say they want to freeze in-state undergraduate tuition at Iowa's public universities for a third straight year, but the House and Senate differ on how to accomplish that - meaning students will have to wait to see just what they'll pay come fall.

The 2015 legislative session was supposed to adjourn Friday. But still facing unfinished business, including a higher education spending plan, lawmakers said they could need weeks more to wrap it up.

Besides the unsettled tuition issue, a hotly debated funding matrix that rewards universities, in part, for having a greater share of in-state enrollment faces an uphill climb to resurface.

Both the House and Senate this week passed spending plans that dropped the regents-proposed model.

'I think it's out,” said Rep. Dave Jacoby, D-Coralville. 'I would be very surprised to see it resurrected in any form.”

The funding model could pull $12.9 million from the University of Iowa and redistribute it between Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, although the Board of Regents asked lawmakers to backfill that nearly $13 million loss this time.

Jacoby said he thinks the issue of higher education funding should be revisited, but said the regents' model appeared to penalize UI while pitting colleges and universities against each other.

'I think yesterday and this week sent a strong message that it is not a funding matrix the Legislature is interested in,” Jacoby said.

Regents President Bruce Rastetter issued a statement expressing disappointment in the House's 'refusal” to implement the performance-based funding.

'The board's performance-based funding proposal was designed to be a long-term solution to a decades-old funding inequity among the three public universities,” Rastetter said.

He said the board looks forward to continuing to work with the governor and lawmakers to secure funding for another tuition freeze for resident undergraduates.

Under the House vote, some of the savings from an efficiency review of Iowa's public universities would be devoted to again freezing resident undergraduate tuition.

That requirement, to some degree, runs counter to a promise the regents made to UI, ISU and UNI that savings would go to the campuses to use as they please.

The House education budget appropriates $977.6 million for the upcoming fiscal year - $8.6 million below current funding, $48.4 million under the Senate's bill and $44.9 million less than the governor proposed.

Rep. Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said savings from the efficiency study's first phase would amount to about $27 million for UI, $17.7 million for ISU, and $4.7 million for UNI.

To be able to afford to freeze tuition, he said, universities would need only a portion of that - UI needs $4 million, ISU needs $3.16 million and UNI needs $1.56 million.

The Senate earlier this week passed a higher education budget bill also funding a tuition freeze - but through an inflationary budget increase, not by using the efficiency savings.

The Senate bill proposes increasing funding to the regent institutions by $16.6 million.

Scott Ketelsen, a UNI spokesman, previously expressed concern about a mandate to use efficiency savings to freeze tuition. But he said Friday it's too soon to talk about consequences while lawmakers are in negotiations.

'This isn't the first time the budget hasn't been set by May 1, and they've always been able to figure it out,” he said.