February 21, 2003 Announcements
Out-of-State
Tuition Waivers Proposed as Counter to HB 331
The Utah House Education Committee unanimously passed out of
committee HB 75, a substitute bill that will grant tuition waivers
to nonresident students effectively countering the negative
impact of House Bill 331 on state universities.
Utah State President Kermit L. Hall said passage of this bill
would provide an important five-year transition to ease HB 331's
full impact. HB doubled the number of residency years and credit
hours required of out-of-state students before qualifying for
lower in-state tuition.
Proposed legislation is scheduled to be heard on the House
floor Wednesday, Feb. 26. Passage of the bill will help to shore
up Utah State's revenue base by permitting the university to
continue to rely on out-of-state students to help subsidize
in-state students.
"This bill will help us attract students from a market
we lost with HB 331," Hall said. "We priced the product
too high."
Without any transition help, it will require 3.5 in-state students
to make up the revenue loss of one out-of-state student paying
out of state tuition. He said it is unlikely Utah students could
make up this difference.
Agriculture students living along the borders of Idaho and
Wyoming were particularly impacted by passage of HB 331, many
of them choosing to attend universities in their own states
instead of paying the higher tuition to attend Utah State.
With the passage of HB 331, Idaho students, for example, were
presented with a new option: remain in their state and pay $2,700
per year in tuition or attend Utah State and pay $9,300 per
year in tuition for two years instead of one.
Utah Farm Bureau also expressed concern about the dwindling
number of border students.
Wes Quinton, Utah Farm Bureau vice president for public policy,
said a five-year transition period is a step in the right direction.
"If USU is to have a continuing strong emphasis on agriculture,
we feel it is very important to help students in neighboring
states attend school in Logan," Quinton said. "These
individuals tend to stay in Utah after graduation to help strengthen
the agricultural sector."
Hall encourages the university community to rally support around
Rep. Loraine Pace's Substitute H.B. 75 because of the positive
impact it will have on university resources. Utah State's budget
was hit doubly hard a year ago when it chose to honor its commitment
to students already enrolled and who expected to pay in-state
tuition after one year instead of two.
For the university to retain 740 first-year students, it provided
them with financial support to the tune of $1.2 million from
discretionary sources. As a result, a substantial loss of budgeted
tuition revenues was averted, Hall said.
By being able to provide tuition waivers in the proposed bill,
the university could focus on regaining students it lost. For
example, the number of out-of-state freshmen is down 249 students
– 25 percent from 2001. In addition, the number of out-of-state
undergraduate transfer students is down 154, or 25 percent from
2001.
Hall said this transition bill provides hope for the university
to recover from this past year's out-of-state enrollment decline.
Without it, using a multi-year analysis, he said the net tuition
loss attributable to HB 331 could be over $3 million for the
2003 freshman class, with a similar or greater loss for the
2004 class and beyond.
Utah State's studentbody President Celestial Bybee said the
proposed legislation is an important amendment to H.B. 331.
It would allow the university a grace period to soften the severe
budget blow it took when H.B. 331 went into effect.
"H.B. 331 drove out-of-state students away — quickly
and without any time for Utah State to adjust to the budget
impacts of the legislation," she said. "H.B. 75 gives
us time to phase into the situation."
Bybee said the proposed legislation is something all the studentbody
leaders from across the state support. Bybee is chair of the
non-residency ad hoc committee of the Utah Council of Studentbody
Presidents.
Southern Utah University, as well as other state colleges,
were also greatly impacted by HB 331 and stands to benefit as
well with the proposed bill.
The number of waivers awarded to the university would be determined
by the Utah Board of Regents working closely with the presidents.
Utah State Wright Flyer to Be Featured on the
Learning Channel
Utah
State's Wright Flyer Project will be featured on The Learning
Channel's program Ultimate Ten on Feb. 23 and 26 at
8 p.m. and Feb. 24 and 27 at 11 p.m. MST. Utah State students
and faculty have built a full-scale replica of the original
Wright brothers' airplane.
Students and faculty members from the mechanical and aerospace
engineering department made up the design team. Students from
the industrial technology department comprised the build team.
The students, along with their faculty mentors, have dedicated
more than 10,000 hours of effort to designing and building the
plane.
The group teamed with the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Utah State
University Research Foundation and the U.S. Air Force to build
the USU Wright Flyer. The Utah State students were given the
challenge to design and build the flyer using space-age materials,
the way the Wright brothers might have done if they were
designing
the plane today.
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