Tuition increase

The University of Texas System's Board of Regents approved an approximately 3.95 percent increase to tuition rates for the next two semesters at nine university of Texas institutions, including UTEP.

"We believe these increases allow us to strike a delicate balance between our efforts to keep student costs affordable and to provide our institutions with the essential resources needed to keep them competitive with their peers while continuing to advance excellence," said the UT System Board of Regents' Chairman James Huffines in a press release.

"We believe these increases to be appropriate. And, we know that our financial aid programs will ensure that our students from low and middle-income families will be buffered from these increases."

While the increases vary among the other institutions in the UT System, UTEP will see a maximum increase of $140 per academic semester.

"The maximum was 3.95 percent or $140, whichever was higher, so $140 makes it a 4.2 percent increase, but it is still significantly less than other institutions," said Richard Padilla, vice president for student affairs.

"Here at UTEP, we have been as conservative as you can get in terms of implementing fees and tuition increases. Seventy percent of students attending public universities in the state of Texas pay more than UTEP students, yet we are one of the seven emerging research institutions."

The increase in tuition will affect all full-time resident undergraduate students at all nine UT System universities. The increase adds to the approximately 70 percent increase that UTEP has seen since 2004.

Alex Munoz, Student Government Association president and senior double major in finance and accounting, said that the increase in tuition will aid the university in retaining professors and to compete nationally to bring top professors from around the country to UTEP.

"What this money would do for the most part is allow us to retain our faculty that are constantly being recruited by other universities with offers of higher salaries. It will also help attract new and bright faculty to UTEP," Munoz said. "In addition to that, the increase of fees will also help to continue building quality academic programs, more class offerings and keep up with the rising cost of lab equipment and machineries to help with research and teaching our students."

According to Munoz, the university has been aware of the impact tuition hikes will have on students and have been very cautious when implementing any increase to student fees.

"No one wants to see an increase intuition, that goes for administration and students, but sometimes these kinds of investments are necessary to be able to keep competitive with other universities in the state of Texas," Munoz said.

"The university has stayed really conscientious about students' income and how raising tuition affects them. That's why UTEP is actually the most affordable institution of those seven schools that are aspiring to become a tier-one university."

Last semester, Padilla and members of the SGA held a series of forums to inform students of the possible increases to tuition.

"I asked students at the forums, which were actually really well-attended, to think about their favorite faculty members. Now they are being offered a higher salary to go to another university. Well, should we let them go? Well, no," Padilla said. "They are at that caliber because of the level of university that we are at, and if we want to stay at that level and keep our faculty members then we've got to be competitive with everybody else and that is what this is about."

Students' opinions on the matter were mixed at the forums and remain that way as the increase has been approved. Some students have acknowledged that there must be an increase to keep current professors from leaving the university, but were still unhappy with the dramatic tuition increases UTEP has seen over the years.

"I know it is important that we keep some of the great professors we have here, but UTEP must not forget about the needs of us, the students," said Irma Almanza, senior biological sciences major.

"We are still a relatively poor city and also a commuter school. While the increases are not as large as some of the other schools in this state, they (UTEP) must remember that we are also not like them in many other ways. I just hope our school isn't just concentrating on tier one and forgetting about the current students."

Aaron Martinez and Vanessa M. Juarez may be reached at prospector@utep.edu.