The cost of attending
University of Wisconsin schools
is going up in the fall.
This month
the UW Board of Regents
approved a 2% tuition hike
for in-state
undergraduate students
plus roughly commensurate
increases in fees and
room and board.
With a 30% decline in
highest-paying
international students
and volatile
federal research funding
what is a university to do
except use that tuition lever?
That's a great question.
UW
the Universities of Wisconsin
have three primary
revenue sources, right?
Federal grants, which we are
among the top in the nation
at securing.
We enroll students who
pay tuition and fees
and we receive funding
from the state.
State support has long stagnated
with the exception
of the recent increase
and so tuition dollars are a
primary way of raising funds.
With a tuition freeze for
many, many years
our ability to do that
was hamstrung.
So it quite literally strangled
some of the campuses.
We benefit from having
international students and even
students from out of state who
pay higher tuition rates because
they can afford it.
They are mobile
geographic for colleges.
With a decline in
international student enrollment
there aren't many other students
that we can look to
except for our in-state students
especially now because
the state has begun to
increasingly regulate
our ability
to even draw students
from Minnesota and Iowa
and other out-of-state partners.