Tuition will increase $679 — an increase of 4.16% — for the 2024-2025 academic year, according to the University of Connecticut’s five-year tuition plan.
The five-year tuition plan is for the fiscal years 2021 to 2025 and is in effect to “protect academic quality, in the face of rising costs,” according to a Dec. 11, 2019, town hall meeting.
The Tuition Increase
According to the 2019 town hall meeting presentation, “As total state support declines, UConn has relied more on tuition.” Associate Vice President for Budget, Planning and Institutional Research Reka Wrynn oversees the entire university budget including the regional campuses, as well as overseeing the operating budget and capital budget. “The primary mission whenever we increase tuition is to make sure that we are staffing sufficiently in the classrooms,” she said via a video call.
She added that the tuition increase serves to ensure the university has enough faculty and the appropriate staff for student success, such as advisors and tutors in the Writing Center and the Quantitative Learning Center, along with any other student support services.
“We don’t raise tuition to cover the full costs of those activities, if we did, tuition would be sky-high,” Wrynn said.
Wrynn added that tuition never covers the full cost of students’ education because some of the cost for students’ education is paid for by state funds, donors and industry partnerships.
“We always make sure that we are thinking about affordability when we raise tuition and fees,” said Wrynn.
With tuition increasing, financial aid will also increase. In the $1.5 billion budget, 11.4% of the total expenditure budget is set aside for financial aid. “We anticipate that it will stay as a stable percent, but dollar-wise, it will increase,” Wrynn said.
The Deficit Mitigation Plan
Moving on to other areas driving the budget, a five-year Deficit Mitigation Plan was presented at the Jan. 24, 2024, town hall meeting. For fiscal year ‘25, the budget will not be approved by the Board of Trustees until June. Currently, it is in the planning stages, according to Wrynn. Wrynn and her team are talking to people to see what the impact is of the planned proposal, and they are working with the state to try and get more funding.
“As the pieces fall into place over the next several months, we will develop a more locked-in budget,” Wrynn added.
The projected deficit for fiscal year ‘25 is $70 million. “In the current year, we used one-time funds of the university to balance our fiscal ‘24 budget, which was $16.1 million. The current budget from the state for fiscal year ‘25 has a reduction of $47.3 million from fiscal year ‘24,” UConn’s Executive Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Geoghegan said in a video presentation shared with the university community prior to the Jan. 24 town hall meeting.
According to Geoghegan, the total appropriation for fiscal year ‘24 is $298.4 million. However, the current budget for fiscal year ‘25 will only be $250.7 million.
The current request to the state is $47.3 million to bring the fiscal year ‘25 budget to around the same value as the current year’s budget. Therefore, the request is a total state support of $298 million for fiscal year ’25.
“If we don’t get that approved, then we will have to identify other, probably, one-time funding sources to try to bridge that gap, until we can generate more permanent funding to fill that hole,” Wrynn said.
There has been a delay in refilling certain positions, primarily on the staff side as well as an evaluation of contracts, “what contracts are must-do’s, what contracts are nice to have” and “identifying the services that we are outsourcing,” Wrynn said.
“If we don’t get that money, some tougher decisions will have to be made, as far as committing to permanent expenses moving forward,” she said.
A major portion of the current state budget shortfall is due to the lack of the American Rescue Plan Act funding. According to Wrynn, UConn is no longer benefiting from one-time funding from ARPA, which was federal funding given to states to assist them through the pandemic and aid them with any expenses. Senior Director for Governmental Relations Joann Lombardo said in the Jan. 24 town hall meeting, “We will continue to advocate, as we always do, for the resources that we need.”
The Housing and Dining Increases
In terms of the budget cuts, those are not included in housing and dining. The housing and dining fees were increased to cover the expenses for what it takes to run the housing and dining operations, and any gains or losses stay within those operations, according to Wrynn.
An example she provided is, if the fund efficiencies within the housing program generated an extra million dollars, that million dollars would be put into reinvestment into housing, such as making improvements to bathrooms or laundry facilities or wi-fi.
The standard housing will increase by 2.75% per academic year, while higher-demand housing options are set to increase by 5%. All meal options will also increase by 2.75% in fiscal year ‘25. According to a letter from Geoghegan to the Board of Trustees sent on Dec. 6, 2023, one justification for these increases is “commodity costs continue to rise, including utilities and food costs. Rate increases are needed to partially offset these rising expenses.”