WSU regents approve tuition hike
May 8—The Washington State University Board of Regents approved a 2.5 percent tuition increase for the 2021-22 academic year during its meeting Friday.
Tuition for in-state undergraduates will increase $127.50 per semester, while in-state graduate students will pay $147.60 more per semester.
Student Regent Arliegh Cayanan was the only regent who voted against the increase. He urged the regents to "reevaluate every component of WSU, making sure that we can get them, if not self-sustaining ... as close to that as we can."
He said the board needs to ensure the university is providing the best value to students who pay "a lot of money to come to this nice university."
Student Nolan Thomaswick expressed his disappointment in the tuition increase during the public comment portion of Friday's meeting.
He said the Associated Students of WSU, the university's student government, did not hear about the proposed increase until last week during a student government council meeting, "much to the chagrin of all the student members."
"Incremental tuition increases of 2.5 percent might seem minimal compared to the previous increases shown, but considering tuition has greatly outpaced inflation since 2000, greatly outpaced it, I and other students disagree," he said.
WSU plans to use money from this tuition increase to provide aid in the form of tuition waivers as well as support for addressing student's mental health and basic needs.
Thomaswick, the incoming president of ASWSU Global, the student government for the university's online campus community, said students need more specifics about this plan.
"What specifically, will the tuition increase fund in terms of mental health and basic needs and how will those specific benefits be equitable between campuses when the needs and access of global campus students are different than other campuses?" he asked.
The regents on Friday also voted to decrease service and activity fee rates for the Pullman and global campuses next year by $18 and $42 respectively. Parking fee increases were approved for the Pullman campus to pay for maintenance costs.
The regents signed off on a financial plan for the WSU athletics budget, which includes selling up to $35.6 million in general revenue bonds. These bonds are expected to be paid off within 20 years using Pac-12 conference revenues.
WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine Dean John Tomkowiak gave a presentation at the beginning of Friday's meeting about the college, which celebrated its first graduating class this week.
During the presentation, he said the WSU family medicine residency program proposed for Pullman Regional Hospital has received preliminary approval.
"It will only be the second of its kind in the entire nation having a program based in a critical access hospital," he said."Usually that's very hard to do because these hospitals are small and they have a lower patient volume, but our team was able to figure out how to meet the standards set out by the accreditors, so we can bring this program into being"
The Board of Regents meeting can be viewed on the WSU YouTube channel.
Kuipers can be reached at akuipers@dnews.com.
