The highest increase -- 12 percent -- is at the Community College of Rhode Island.

01:49 PM EST on Thursday, February 26, 2004

BY JENNIFER D. JORDAN
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / Bill Murphy Students like Mike Knight at Community College of Rhode Island, in Warwick, would pay more to attend state schools; tution and fees would increase 12 percent at CCRI, 11.5 percent at URI and 9.7 percent at Rhode Island College.

Editor's note: This article is a longer version of the story that appeared in today's Providence Journal, where it had been trimmed for space considerations.

Governor Carcieri's budget proposal may protect some elements of public higher education, but it also asks Rhode Island students and families to shoulder more of the burden of paying for college.

Carcieri wants voters to support a November bond referendum for a proposed $50-million biotechnology center at the University of Rhode Island, calling such initiatives the lifeblood of the state's economic development.

But Carcieri's proposal to raise tuition at the state's three public colleges by the highest percentages in two decades may push higher education out of the reach of Rhode Island's neediest and fastest-growing population -- first generation, low-income, limited-English proficient youth, in a state already ranked low in college affordability.

"The higher the tuition, the less likely certain people are going to be able to go to school," said Stephen P. McAllister, associate commissioner of higher education.

Carcieri's spending plan, which earmarks $623.6 million for higher education -- a 1.8-percent increase over this year, calls for a 12-percent increase in in-state tuition and fees this fall at the Community College of Rhode Island, 11.5 percent at URI and 9.7 percent at Rhode Island College. Those hikes are still below the national average of 14-percent increases, the state budget office pointed out.

Most of that increase will offset CCRI's new Newport campus and expansion into Providence, said Higher Education Commissioner Jack Warner. Warner, along with URI President Robert L. Carothers, declined to criticize Carcieri's proposal and instead expressed relief that state colleges weren't harder hit. Carcieri had asked all state departments to cut their budgets by 10 percent; state colleges instead said they would have to raise tuition and fees, but had hoped to keep them in the 3-percent to 7-percent range.

"These costs are not as low as we would like, but when you compare this scenario to what a 10-percent budget cut would have looked like, this is not anywhere as bad as that," Warner said.

Three factors soften the impact of the proposed hikes, Warner said. First, state lawmakers often restore money to education as they hammer out their versions of the budget each spring. Second, the Board of Governors of Higher Education has some latitude in setting rates and spreading the burden among in-state and out-of-state students, so actual increases are not likely to be as high as the governor's plan. Third, more scholarship money for needy students is set aside when tuition rises; the three state colleges gave out $36 million in scholarship money last year.

"I think the governor has a strong commitment to the investment value of higher education, and I think he stood by this commitment in a very difficult budget year," Warner said. "Remember, he is trying to fill a $192-million hole in the budget."

Carothers thanked Carcieri for sparing state colleges deep cuts and noted that state money accounts for just 21 percent of URI's budget -- the majority comes from tuition and fees and federal grants.

URI senior Jesse Whitsitt-Lynch was less sanguine about the proposal.

"I know people who work three jobs now and this will make it impossible for them to come to school," said Whitsitt-Lynch, a member of the Student Senate. "The money being saved in the short-term by these tuition increases is lost in the long-term when fewer Rhode Islanders are capable of filling jobs necessary to stimulate the economy."

The last time tuition and fee hikes reached double digits was in 1992, when Rhode Island was in a recession and still reeling from the banking crisis. Tuition and fees jumped by 28 percent at URI and RIC and by 26 percent at CCRI.

Said McAllister, "It took years for the institutions to recover from those kinds of increases."