UWM Students and Chancellor Concerned About Proposed Tuition Increase

UWM Chancellor Mark Mone and students are worried about the recent announcement of a 5% tuition increase by the UW System President, as expressed by Mone during the Academic Staff Senate.

At a time when many students face challenges due to high prices and taxes considering economic inflation, there’s an announcement by Mone during the Academic Senate meeting of raising tuition fees.

While the tuition increase proposal is planned to take effect in the 2023-24 school year, the cumulative effect of the absence of tuition hikes has already had a harmful financial impact on the university.

Without any tuition increases for over a decade, the funding shortage has affected UWM’s budget, resulting in significant losses.

In a recent meeting with the Academic Staff Senate, Chancellor Mone expressed his distress about the proposed tuition increase, stating that “while a 5% increase is distressing for both me and our students, it’s noteworthy since our two-year campuses haven’t had a tuition increase in over a decade.” Due to the lack of tuition increases, the university has suffered a decline in its budget, resulting in a loss of millions of dollars.

The suggestion of rising tuition fees by approximately 5% is still under review. The UW System Accountability dashboard and the governing body are currently negotiating whether it should be slightly lower than that. Nevertheless, Mone thinks the increase won’t exceed this percentage. For at least 12 years, UW campuses haven’t implemented any tuition hikes.

However, the governor has proposed a Tuition Promise program worth $24.5 million, starting in fiscal year 2025, which UWM is eligible for as a Pell Grant recipient. Pell Grants are federal financial aid for eligible undergraduate students in the United States, awarded based on financial need and do not require repayment by the student.

The Tuition Promise Program is a program offered by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that guarantees eligible undergraduate students the same tuition and fees rate for their entire four-year program. It provides certainty and predictability in regard to the cost of attendance at UWM.

The UW system had requested a 4% increase for each of the next two biennial budget years, but the governor proposed a 5% increase for the first year and 3% for the following year, resulting in an 8% increase overall. However, this would require the campuses to fund 30% of the increase, leading to a budget cut for them. Over three years, the campus would need to allocate around $4.8 million to cover this cost, with the first year being approximately half to 55% of that amount and the next year being three-quarters of it according to Mone’s speech. Consequently, funding 30% of the compensation increase would result in a reduction in the campus’s budget.

During the Academic Senate meeting held on March 14 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the announcement of a 5% tuition increase proposed by the UWM System President raised concerns among both the university’s Chancellor and students. While the increase is intended to address funding shortages and budget losses, the timing of the announcement, amid economic challenges for students, has sparked worries about the impact on low and moderate-income households.

UWM student Charmeka Wells expressed her concerns about the proposed tuition increase, stating that “every year I struggle to pay my tuition and a lot of fees I don’t even know where they come from…It’s going to make attending college extremely hard for students of color and students from low-income families like myself.”

However, the UWM community has the potential to benefit from the governor’s proposed Tuition Promise program, which is expected to provide financial assistance to eligible students and support the state’s workforce needs by increasing the number of college graduates.

Mone added that despite funding various capital projects, such as renovating the Union, constructing a new chemistry building, and adding an orthopedic hospital to the athletic facility, the Health Sciences renovation, known as the Northwest Quad, did not receive budgetary approval. This absence of funding could have a significant impact on the 19 healthcare majors, as it would allow for the consolidation of resources for teaching, research, and clinical work centered around the Zimmer Clinical Simulation Center, which has the potential to train an additional 3,000 students in the next decade.

“I think the current tuition is also expensive, but I don’t think it makes sense to raise it further here. I don’t understand the 5% increase,” said Junhyeok Son, a student at UWM.