By Joe Hadsall

jhadsall@joplinglobe.com

Autumn Peters, of Monett, has attended classes at Kent State University in Ohio and Pittsburg State University in Kansas.

Now a junior at Missouri Southern State University, she notices something that has followed her throughout her college career.

“Tuition increases,” Peters said. “I would hear about them all the time.”

Rising tuition prices worry students, even at MSSU, which has the lowest tuition among four-year schools in Missouri.

“I’m trying to cram in classes into my schedule before the price goes up any more,” sophomore Stacey Massey said.

A bill to be filed today would limit tuition increases at Missouri colleges and universities to the inflation rate. If approved, it also could tie a college’s funding appropriation from the state to its performance.

“Clearly, Missouri families and students want the state to do something about skyrocketing tuition costs,” Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, said last week. “We believe there are ways to achieve a stabilization.”

Gov. Matt Blunt also called on the General Assembly to do so during his State of the State address on Jan. 24. He said his proposed budget includes a $40 million funding increase for higher education, and he challenged legislators to pass a tuition cap.

Julio Leon, president of MSSU, said adhering to a tuition cap should be easy, as long as the state doesn’t cut its funding to the schools.

“The problem comes when the state substantially reduces its appropriation in times of economic instability,” Leon said. “In that situation, a university may be forced to increase its rates beyond inflation.”

Nodler, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said the bill would use the Midwest’s consumer price index as a guide for setting rate increases.

Under the proposal, a college that raised its tuition above the index could see 5 percent of its annual state appropriation withheld. But, a college could submit a request for an increase above the index to the Missouri Coordinating Board for Higher Education.

“If a university wants to go above the CPI, then it has to justify itself,” Nodler said. “We want to protect students from unpredictable increases and costs.”

In-state tuition rates have increased by 53.4 percent since the 2000-01 school year, according to the Missouri Department of Higher Education.

“Missouri is obligated to provide education for elementary schools,” Leon said. “Consequently, it’s an entitlement. When there is a shortage of funds, higher education is about the only agency that is viewed as discretionary.”

Performance-based

Nodler said another provision of the bill would authorize five performance standards for colleges, though the bill will not mandate what those standards would be.

Three of those standards would be developed by the state coordinating board. The other two would vary among colleges, with each school developing its own customized standards to meet.

Those standards could be used as a basis for funding decisions in the future.

Other provisions of the bill include:

n Approval of Blunt’s plan to sell the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority’s assets to finance capital projects at universities, including a new health sciences center at Missouri Southern.

n Giving more power to the state coordinating board.

n Regulations that force out-of-state colleges that operate in Missouri to submit to the same approval procedure for rate increases.

n Core classes, such as math, science and language, would be transferable among all of the state’s two- and four-year colleges.

n Requirements for universities to offer course information on the Internet.

Nodler said the bill also would improve the state’s needs-based student-aid program.

Something needs to be done about tuition, agreed Peters, the junior at MSSU. She thinks college costs are spiraling out of control.

“By the time we graduate, before we get our first jobs, we are already in debt,” she said. “It’s insane.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.





Student burden

Barbara Dixon, president of Truman State University in Kirksville, testified before the General Assembly that students in the “not-so-distant past” paid about 25 percent to 35 percent of the costs of their higher education. Now, that percentage is more than 50 percent and rising, she said.