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Higher Tuition: What It Means To You

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 5, 2007

Starting in January, Florida's public university students will pay 5 percent more in tuition.

Members of the state university oversight board will consider proposals on where the money will go when they meet in Orlando over the next two days. The $9.5 million universities will generate, however, will do little to curb the larger class sizes students found when the school year started.

Budget cuts have cost USF about $12 million. Its share of the tuition increase: about $1.4 million.

"It's going to help, but it comes nowhere close to backfilling the loss of funds," said USF Provost Ralph Wilcox.

THE COSTS

$55

Per semester increase for a student taking 15 credit hours

$3.68

Per-credit-hour increase for all students

$77.39

Total per-credit-hour cost without fees

POSSIBLE BENEFITS

University of Florida

$1.5 million

All will go to hiring about 10 faculty members and eight advisers for the sciences and liberal arts. "Our student-to-faculty ratio is abysmal," Provost Janie Fouke said.

Florida State University

$1.4 million

Of that, nearly $77,000 will go to running the library 24 hours daily from Sunday through Friday. About $750,000 will improve police and security services, and $541,000 will go to financial aid. The university will put $55,600 in reserve, pending more state cuts.

University of South Florida

$1.4 million

Of that, nearly $880,000 will go to hiring about eight faculty members and two advisers to relieve crowded undergraduate classrooms at the Tampa campus. About $325,000 will go to financial aid packages for students in Tampa. The rest will go to similar services at campuses in Lakeland, St. Petersburg and Sarasota.

University of Central Florida

$1.6 million

About 66 percent, or $1.1 million, will allow UCF to increase its course offerings to offset already large class sizes. The rest, about $550,000, will go to financial aid.

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