The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents unanimously struck down a policy that required system schools to have student input when seeking to raise tuition costs for specific programs last week.
“We have repeatedly heard that tuition bills are too complicated, and these policy changes are intended to simplify the process for students and parents,” Universities of Wisconsin Media Director Mark Pitsch said.
The change involves differential tuition — an additional fee on top of base tuition, which is set by the Board of Regents, according to state law. Differential tuition is often charged for programs that have high operating costs, such as the health sciences and engineering. A differential tuition may be set at a dollar amount or as a percentage of base tuition, according to the Universities of Wisconsin.
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This change directly impacts shared governance at the Universities of Wisconsin. At UW–Madison, shared governance gives representation to academic staff, university staff, faculty and students, who all take part in making decisions concerning university operations.
“Shared governance is important because students, and the other shared governance groups, are the most impacted by policies and decisions,” Associated Students of Madison Chair Kevin Jacobson said in an email statement to The Badger Herald. “Having students, and other shared governance representatives in the room when policy is being discussed, changes the conversation and creates better outcomes for students and the university at large.”
According to Jacobson, while this change in policy does not have any impact on shared governance as a principle, it erodes protections for student shared governance. Through implementing this change, an environment with less student input on tuition differentials will take hold.
Wisconsin is the only state in the U.S. where the law requires UW to gain student approval of certain policies before they can go into effect. ASM has legal rights to allocate funds and make policy recommendations pertaining to student life, services and interests, according to the ASM website.
“The university should be required to ask for student feedback about increases that have that much impact,” Jacobson said.
This past March, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents adopted higher differential tuition for nursing, engineering and business majors at UW-Madison, according to The Badger Herald. Combined with a 4% increase on base tuition for Wisconsin residents and a 3% increase for non-residents starting in the 2023-24 academic year, tuition rates for those programs went up between 9-14% in total, Jacobson said.
