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College Students Cope With Tuition Increases

Tribune photo by JASON BEHNKEN

Joey Shafer brings food out to one of his tables while working at Cody's Roadhouse on a recent Friday night. Shafer is a sophomore at the University of South Florida and will now try to get extra hours at work to pay for the increase in tuition.

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By LINDSAY PETERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 15, 2009

University of South Florida's rock-bottom tuition is a boon for sophomore Joey Shafer, who pays his bills with a patchwork of student loans, grants, scholarships and a job at Cody's Roadhouse restaurant.

Talk of dramatic tuition increases has him wondering whether he can stay.

A bill in the Florida Legislature would allow state universities to increase their tuitions by 15 percent each year until they catch up with the national average, which is $6,600, nearly two-thirds higher than Florida's.

So by Shafer's senior year, $4,000 in annual tuition charges for a full-time course load could rise to about $5,300.

"It's going to make it much harder to pay the bills," especially after last year's 15 percent increase, he said. Those bills include the cost of raising a 3-year-old son with his partner Ali Ewald, who's working on a nursing degree at USF.

USF officials say they know it's a lot of money, but after a series of state budget cuts, they need more from students and parents to help make up for the losses.

The state Legislature has cut USF's budget by $50 million, more than 15 percent, since mid-2007. It cut more than $300 million from the other 10 institutions in the state university system.

They say that without more tuition money the schools will slide into mediocrity or worse as faculty are laid off and lured away by the better-off universities across the country.

"Our universities are stretched, there is a brain drain taking place," said state Rep. Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, chairman of the House State and Community Colleges and Workforce Appropriations Committee.

"If we don't do something, we're going to be faced with a second-tier university system," he said.

Weatherford filed the tuition bill after Gov. Charlie Crist proposed the increase late last year, siding with the university presidents and reversing his earlier objections to tuition increases. One provision would require students with Bright Futures scholarships to pay all or part of the increase. Bright Futures awards tuition scholarships to Florida students with high scores on their college entrance tests.

The chairwoman of the university system Board of Governors, Sheila McDevitt of Tampa, urged board members and university presidents to work together to pass the bill, which includes a provision to spend 30 percent of the extra tuition collected on financial aid.

"The way the bill is now, it is a tremendous step forward," she said at the Board of Governors meeting in Tallahassee last week. "I think the Legislature is recognizing there just is not enough money to go around."

More cuts are expected as the economy worsens, but "students aren't going away," said USF provost Ralph Wilcox. "More and more are knocking at the door wanting a quality, competitive education."

After keeping Florida's tuition low for years – it was 49th out of 50 last year – the Legislature's move may seem like a radical shift, he said. "But it's altogether consistent with national patterns" as legislatures across the country cut higher education funding and ask students and parents for more.

But the bad economy is also squeezing families. "It's hard, very hard," said Ivette Moran, whose daughter Michelle, a USF freshman, lives at home. Michelle works at Walgreen drug store to help pay her college bills but needs help from her parents, too.

Ivette, a bill collector for JP Morgan Chase, said she'll probably have to begin working overtime to pay the extra tuition costs. "We're trying not to go into debt. We don't want to borrow."

Shafer's partner Ali Ewald works at the USF Sun Dome. But she only gets a handful of hours a week, she said. So she's working on getting a second job, tutoring elementary school children.

The tuition increase for both of them could add $1,200 to their bills next year and $2,600 the year after that. "It's going to be a problem. Day care went up, too."

Joey now works about 30 hours a week at Cody's. But with the economy weakening, he's not sure how many more hours he could get. "The way the restaurant business has been, it's been hard to pay the bills."

The head of financial aid at USF, Billie Jo Hamilton, hopes to have more money to offer if this bill passes. Also the proposed federal stimulus plan includes more college grant money. But still she worries it won't be enough. Aid is stretched thin with new demands that began last year, as people began losing their jobs and taking hits to their investments.

"It's never enough," she said. "We'll do our best to try to give folks a reasonable amount to let them enroll. It's going to be a difficult situation."

The Weatherford bill gives the 11 state universities the option to set their own tuition increases, up to 15 percent per year. It's similar to a bill last year that applied only to USF and four others, University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Central Florida and Florida International University.

They way it works, if the Legislature increases tuition by 6 percent, as it did last year, a university could add up to 9 percent to that, as USF did. Or if the Legislature doesn't approve any increase, a university could impose the entire 15 percent. Every increase is subject to the approval of the board of governors.

What the legislature does on tuition is significant because only the percentage it imposes, not the additional amount imposed by the university, would be covered by the Bright Futures scholarships.

For instance, when USF added 9 percent to the Legislature's 6 percent tuition increase last year, its Bright Futures recipients were responsible for paying only that 9 percent, which was about $350.

Not all lawmakers favor this approach. "If we make it so burdensome that students can't attend college, we're being very shortsighted," said State Rep. Stephen Precourt, R-Winter Garden, chairman of the State University and Private Colleges Policy Committee.

He doubts that the universities' problems are as bad as they say they are. "There's that constant complaint that people will be laid off," he said. "But to date there has not been a huge amount of that. They are doing a yeoman's job of finding efficiencies and creative ways to deliver services."

There's no way to avoid some kind of tuition hike, however, said state Sen. Evelyn Lynn, R-Ocala, chairwoman of the Senate Higher Education Appropriations Committee. "We have to see what next year's budget numbers are, but it doesn't look good….We simply do not have the money to continue it as it is."

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834.

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