University of Iowa graduate students call tuition freeze ‘disingenuous’

The University of Iowa graduate student union on Tuesday called a Board of Regents proposal to freeze resident undergraduate tuition for an unprecedented third straight year 'disingenuous.”

The union also requested a waiver of mandatory fees after the board earlier this month agreed to freeze tuition for undergraduate Iowans in the 2015-2016 school year while increasing tuition rates for graduate and non-resident students and upping fees for everyone.

'Graduate employees should have their mandatory fees waived since (the fees) are just tuition by another name and graduate employees are guaranteed 100-percent tuition reimbursement,” according to a 'white paper” made public Tuesday by the Campaign to Organize Graduate Students, or COGS, which represents all UI teaching assistants and research assistants.

UI officials said fee revenue goes toward specific programs supporting student activities or services, but COGS officials said they don't believe that.

'Fees are used interchangeably with tuition to cover basic administrative expenses,” according to the COGS paper. 'This allows the Board of Regents to maintain claims that tuition rates are frozen or kept low despite continuing increases to the overall cost of education.”

The Board of Regents at its December meeting voted to increase tuition by about 1.75 percent for most graduate and professional students at its three public universities - non-resident graduate students at Iowa State University will see a 1.2 percent increase. Tuition also will go up for non-resident undergraduates by 1.75 percent at UI and University of Northern Iowa and by 1.2 percent at ISU, according to the board's proposal, which is contingent on state funding.

Approved fee increases for the next school year vary by university and by education level. Regents approved a 3.14 percent fee increase for UI graduate students, combining with tuition to drive up the total cost of education for UI graduate students by 1.95 percent for residents and 1.83 percent for non-residents, according to regent documents.

In the paper released Tuesday, COGS officials said those increases continue a troubling trend. UI tuition rates have risen 260 percent since the 2000-2001 school year, according to COGS, and fees have increased about 500 percent. Graduate employees 15 years ago paid three mandatory fees totaling $188 a year, according to COGS. Now they pay nearly $1,000 a year, the COGS paper reports.

And, union officials added, it's been a challenge to determine how fee revenue is spent.

'The extremely vague data COGS has received suggests that student fees are used to cover the same basic administrative expenses and university operating costs as tuition,” according to the report.

COGS officials requested data around the use of student fees as part of its negotiations with the university and the Board of Regents for a new 2015-2017 contract.

Through those negotiations, COGS requested a 4.5 percent salary increase for both of the next two years and 100-percent reimbursements for both tuition and mandatory fees. The Board of Regents countered with no salary raise and a change to the tuition waiver in place for graduate employees.

Instead of a 100 percent waiver at the rate of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences tuition that currently is available to graduate students with a 25-percent or greater appointment, the board has proposed giving only students with a 50-percent or higher appointment a full-tuition waiver. The waiver would be prorated for graduate employees with lesser appointments, meaning an employee with a 25 percent appointment would only get a 50-percent waiver going forward.

Those negotiations are continuing in private, with the next meeting scheduled for January.

John Keller, UI professor and associate provost for graduate education, said multiple other institutions in the Big 10 offer a prorated tuition waiver to graduate employees similar to the one being proposed for UI, including Ohio State University, Rutgers University, the universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nebraska.

Only two institutions with graduate employees don't assess fees - Michigan State University and Penn State University, Keller said.

'At all other institutions, students pay some level of fees,” he said.

Keller said the university is working to provide more detail to COGS around how fees are used. But, he said, 'They are all going to help students in one way or another.”

And, Keller said, even though fees have increased over time, so has inflation and the cost of living. When compared with peer institutes, he said, UI is in 'the middle of the pack.”