BOSTON — The University of Massachusetts has agreed to increase tuition, room and board next academic year, as leaders on Beacon Hill disagree over creating a “tuition lock” system and how much to invest in public higher education.

The UMass board of trustees voted during its quarterly meeting Wednesday to increase tuition for in-state undergraduates by 2.5% for the 2022-23 academic year, to $17,364, adding $395 to the bill of a student at the flagship Amherst campus, and slightly less at the Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses, UMass announced.

Room and board costs are also rising on the Amherst campus by 4.5%, to 15,756, and on the Dartmouth and Lowell campuses by 2.7%.

UMass had not raised tuition during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tuition for graduate students is also going up — 2.5% for in-state graduate students at the Amherst, Boston and Lowell campuses, 3.5% for medical students at the T.H. Chan School of Medicine, Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing and Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and 2% at UMass Law.

UMass sophomore Ella Prabhakar was the only undergraduate of four UMass community members who spoke to the board before they voted. Prabhakar is secretary of the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts and argued that UMass has a unique obligation to offer affordable education as a public institution.

“Many of us came here because of the economic opportunity, because private college or because leaving the state was a pipe dream,” Prabhakar said. “Despite this, we are still being progressively milked dry of our resources as the greed of the UMass system continues to grow.”

MassGrant, the state’s primary tool for providing need-based financial aid to students, has shrunk in its impact over the past few decades in the face of tuition increases and higher student demand. In 1998, the aid covered about 80% of tuition and fees at public universities. Today, it covers only 8% of tuition and fees for UMass students and 11% for state university students, according to a report from The Hildreth Institute.

The state contributed 9% of the aid available to students in fiscal year 2023, and federal free aid represented 15% of the available aid. Together, government aid contributed $137 million to UMass students’ tuition this academic year.

From 2001 to 2021, the inflation-adjusted national average for state-provided financial aid per full-time equivalent student increased 15%, Hildreth Institute researchers found. Over the same span, the inflation-adjusted amount of state aid per FTE Massachusetts student dropped 47%, the report says.

As government aid has struggled to keep pace with demand and tuition increases, university-generated financial aid has grown to represent 69% of free aid available for students — $395 million in fiscal year 2023. Of the university-generated aid, 81% goes to in-state students.

Student perspective

While they weren’t thrilled with the extra expense to attend college next year, UMass students interviewed on Thursday were resigned to the idea.

UMass sophomore Karthik Shankar acknowledged the rising cost of attending UMass may relate to inflation and diminishing state funding for higher education.

“It’s our gut reaction to be like, ‘How can they do this to us?’ But the nature of economics is a lot more confusing,” Shankar said, noting that as a result of changing economic factors, “the burden falls on the students.”

Junior Bella Donovan considered selecting a limited meal plan to avoid the rising cost of on-campus dining. She said the board should have cast their vote earlier in the academic year to offer students enough time to adjust for the increasing cost of attending UMass.

“It could have been beneficial to know earlier if you were to apply for scholarships or more financial aid,” Donovan said. “It would be pretty important for parents and students to have that information available a lot earlier so they could prepare for it.”

Legislative proposals

The tuition increases at the state’s public universities come against a backdrop of disagreement on investments into higher education on Beacon Hill.

Gov. Maura Healey recommended a $93 million expansion of the MassGrant Plus scholarship program, for low-income, in-state undergraduates. This increase, the largest proposed in the program’s history, would expand the scholarship to part-time students and cover additional direct costs of attendance such as fees, books and supplies. The Healey administration estimates the $93 million would provide 33,000 students with assistance.

The House Ways and Means Committee released its version of the state budget on Wednesday, earmarking $84 million for MassGrant Plus. Using newly available dollars from a surtax on the state’s highest earners on expanding this scholarship program is one of the only areas where the two budgets align on higher education investments.

Healey recommended a total $360 million of the $1 billion that the state expects to bring in through the surtax be spent on higher education initiatives. Unique to her budget, which was drafted by former UMass finance official Matt Gorzkowicz, is a “tuition lock” proposal.

Under the governor’s plan, students attending UMass or state universities would lock in four years of the same tuition during their first year, though it could be increased for each incoming class of students. Healey proposes $59 million to offset costs for the initiative. She also recommended $140 million for one-time investments in capital improvement to public college and university campuses.

House leaders’ version of the budget did not include capital improvements or the tuition lock proposal, though they proposed increasing the High Demand Scholarship Program from $2 million to $50 million. This scholarship is given to students pursuing “in-demand” jobs in Massachusetts who commit to staying in the state five years after graduation. Healey’s budget did not include any money for this initiative.

Increasing the cost of room and board also exacerbates the challenges students face finding on-campus housing, according to sophomore Tucker Beaudin, who selected housing beyond his price range for the 2023-24 academic year as there was no available housing in the residential areas he could afford.

 

“I’m basically forced [into] the housing that’s like $3,000 more expensive a semester than what I had this year,” said Beaudin, who pays for the cost of room and board by working on-campus and during the summer. “It basically forced me to take out loans that I wouldn’t have to take if I got the housing I had the first two years.”

Beaudin said he wished there were more UMass students influencing the vote besides student-elected trustee Adam Lechowicz, who voted against increasing tuition and room and board.

“If we’re the ones paying for it, it’d be kind of nice if student government could at least have more involvement than one person on a board of people who all aren’t students,” Beaudin said.

The budget moves next to the House floor for debate, then to the Senate, where senators will take their own approach to a higher education agenda.

Sam Drysdale is a reporter with the State House News Service. Sophie Hauck is a journalism student at UMass Amherst.]]>