Iowa lawmakers advance bill to freeze public university tuition for 5 years

DES MOINES — With only modest concern raised by a Board of Regents lobbyist and Democratic lawmaker, a House higher education subcommittee Tuesday advanced a bill that would prohibit Iowa’s public universities from increasing resident undergraduate tuition and fees by any amount for the next five years through 2031.

House Study Bill 531 is different from two other measures advancing through House and Senate subcommittees that would freeze a resident undergraduate’s tuition for four years at the rate being charged their freshman year. A recent regent study on the impact of those bills found potential losses in the tens of millions unless the board imposes a “non-refundable up-front premium” for students wanting to freeze their rates — meant to absorb anticipated losses from the universities’ typical annual inflationary increases.

“We're registered undecided on the bill,” regents lobbyist Jillian Carlson told lawmakers Tuesday about the proposal to ban resident undergraduate tuition increases altogether for five years, noting, “We do have some concerns about freezing tuition and how that will impact our institutions financially.”

Without elaborating on those concerns, Carlson noted the board last year adopted a policy limiting annual tuition increases to a three-year rolling average of the Higher Education Price Index.

“And so the board is definitely keeping affordability in mind when setting those rates, and has been for the past few years,” Carlson said.

‘Has to come from somewhere’

Nathan Arnold — lobbyist for the non-union, nonpartisan Professional Educators of Iowa association — said his organization is neutral on the bill, seeing both pros and cons.

“We like the idea that people shouldn't hide the ball in terms of their prices, or pull a bait and switch or anything like that — you know, the idea that sticker prices are what you're going to pay throughout,” Arnold said, while also flagging financial realities facing higher education.

“There's economic mathematics,” he said. “The money has to come from somewhere. It either has to come from other students or the quality has to go down potentially.”

Given the bill doesn’t restrict the universities from increasing tuition for out-of-state and graduate students, passage could compel the campuses to look to those students for more income — even as non-resident rates already are more than triple the undergraduate resident rates at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.

“That being said, we're not opposed to the bill by any means,” Arnold said. “Just offering some thoughts.”

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Rep. Dave Jacoby, D-Coralville, said he understands the benefit of making tuition more predictable for families — especially given other costs that balloon the overall cost of attending college, like room and board.

But he asked whether his colleagues are interested in imposing the same tuition-increase restrictions on private colleges that want access to the state-funded Iowa Tuition Grant or on the public community colleges that want to start offering four-year bachelor’s degrees.

“Are we asking them to freeze their tuition too?” Jacoby said.

‘Passing more and more down’

In 2026, Iowa’s public universities get the majority of their general higher education revenue from tuition at 67 percent, with 28 percent coming from state appropriations — leaving just 5 percent from “other“ sources.

Those percentages are the opposite of what they were in the early 1980s, when 77 percent of the campuses’ general education funds came from the state and 21 percent came from the students.

Tuition hikes that have increased average base resident undergraduate rates across the regent system to $9,296 — three times the average $2,906 in 2001 — correspond with big drops in state support, like the $77.8 million reduction from 2001 to 2005, amounting to a 14 percent cut.

From 2009 to 2012, appropriations fell again from $577.5 million to $448.8 million or 22 percent — while average undergraduate in-state tuition increased 16 percent. And from 2016 to 2019 the tuition average jumped another 14 percent as general university appropriations fell 5 percent.

“We’re passing more and more down to the tuition payers,” Jacoby said Tuesday, urging his colleagues to return state support of higher education to its 2000 benchmark — when appropriations accounted for nearly two-thirds of general university funding and tuition accounted for one-third.

“The level would be the percentage of operating cost,” Jacoby said, as opposed to the actual amount.

Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, who sponsored the legislation, said the full committee would consider signing off on the measure this week.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

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