Regents consider tuition increases early as legislation banning rate hikes advances

IOWA CITY — Months earlier than usual — and with legislation advancing to prohibit tuition increases in one way or another — Iowa’s Board of Regents on Tuesday proposed rate increases for the 2026-27 academic year aimed at addressing “uncertainty surrounding other primary revenue sources.”

According to the tuition increase proposal going before the Board of Regents for a first reading next week, all three of Iowa’s public universities would impose a 3 percent rate bump for resident undergraduate and graduate students — along with varying increases for non-resident students and those in costlier programs.

In dollars, the 3 percent hike would add $287 for University of Iowa resident undergraduates, bringing their rate to $9,852 in the next academic year. And it would add $286 and $262 for those students at Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, respectively, bringing those total costs to $9,816 and $9,054.

“Funding from the proposed tuition increases will help address growing financial challenges including inflationary cost increases, uncertainty surrounding other primary revenue sources, recruiting and retaining faculty and staff in national markets, health care, meeting collective bargaining terms, deferred maintenance needs in academic facilities, and student financial aid to provide higher education opportunities to more students,” according to the board’s tuition increase proposal.

Final action on the 2026-27 tuition rates is scheduled for April, according to board documents — months earlier than is typical for the regents, which in years past have given final approval in June.

The April passage could come before the end of the current legislative session, which has seen a slew of bills in the higher education space — including two that would, in some way, ban the Board of Regents from raising tuition.

House File 2362, which advanced out of committee Feb. 4, would direct each of Iowa’s public universities to establish a policy locking in tuition rates for resident undergraduate students for four subsequent years — “commencing with a first academic year of enrollment beginning in or after 2027.”

House File 2242, which advanced out of committee Jan. 28, would simply prohibit any increase in resident undergraduate tuition for the next five years — through July 1, 2031.

The Board of Regents gets the majority of its general education revenue from tuition — about 67 percent — with about 28 percent coming from state appropriations. That leaves just 5 percent from “other” sources.

And state appropriations have dwindled since the 1980s — when they accounted for 77 percent of the campuses’ general education revenue. In 2009, the state appropriated $577.5 million in general education dollars to the universities — which is about 13 percent more than 2026’s $503.8 million.

Lawmakers last session did not approve any general fund increase for the campuses — with Republican leaders this session warning of another flat funding year without evidence of change at the universities.

“Things change, and we need to evolve as a state,” Rep. John Wills, R-Spirit Lake, said during a discussion this session about a bill that would study the imposition of new “performance based funding” metrics for public university appropriations.

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That bill, House File 2243, passed out of committee Jan. 28.

“We need to look into and research other opportunities and other ways of doing business, because sometimes the status quo — the way we’ve always done it — isn’t enough.”

Total average annual cost: $27,468

Rates for students coming from another state would vary by campus under the proposal — with Iowa State seeking the biggest hike for nonresidents at 4.5 percent at the undergraduate level, amounting to an increase of $1,286 for a total of $29,864.

The University of Iowa is proposing the smallest non-resident bump at 1.5 percent or $475 — although its total undergraduate out-of-state rate still would top the other campuses at $32,128.

UNI is keeping its rate proposal at 3 percent across the board — for all its resident and non-resident undergraduate and graduate students. At the graduate level, only UI is straying from the 3 percent bump to offer a lower 1.5 percent increase.

Campuses across the country are targeting out-of-state students as a long-predicted enrollment cliff materializes — leaving fewer high school graduates to recruit from following a decline in the birth rate around the recession 18 years ago in 2008.

Although Iowa’s number of high school graduates between 2023 and 2041 is expected to dip only 4 percent, neighboring Illinois is anticipating a 32 percent drop — the highest in the continental U.S., and second only to Hawaii’s 33 percent projection, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.

That would be problematic for Iowa — as Illinois is the top out-of-state student producer for the regent universities, sending 11,345 to one of the three campuses this fall. That’s 2.5 times the next closest nonresident-student producer of Minnesota, which delivered 4,517 students to a regent university this year.

Compared to its peer group, the University of Iowa has the lowest non-resident undergraduate tuition and fees rate of $33,710 — nearly half the University of Michigan’s highest at $63,962.

Looking at in-state undergraduate comparisons, UI and UNI sit third from the bottom and Iowa State is fourth lowest among its peers.

Including tuition, fees, room, board and other ancillary costs such as books, supplies and transportation, the projected average total cost for a resident undergraduate to attend a public university in Iowa — with the proposed increases — would be $27,468 a year.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com