Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 28, 1990 TAG: 9004280096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES HIGHER EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
But out-of-state students and their parents will be asked to pay $528 more, a 16.2 percent increase, the board of visitors decided Friday.
All undergraduates will pay $50 more in fees, a 5.8 percent increase.
"The gist of what we are proposing . . . is that we have been bad [in the past] on out-of-state student tuition," President Donald Dedmon said. "And that has been very deliberate because we have been trying to encourage out-of-state enrollment."
Out-of-state tuition for undergraduates will go from $3,264 to $3,792, while the out-of-state fee for graduate students will jump from $514 to $1,362, a 165 percent increase. Seventeen percent of Radford's students are from outside Virginia.
"What's proposed here is within the governor's guidelines and I think it's good news and bad news," Dedmon told the board. "If the governor's guidelines would permit, we would increase in-state [tuition]."
Two state schools - Virginia State University in Petersburg and Old Dominion University in Norfolk - cut their in-state tuition this year, VSU by 10.9 percent and ODU by 3.4 percent.
Gov. Douglas Wilder this month persuaded the General Assembly to put a 6.5 percent cap on tuition increases at the state's four-year colleges and universities.
The ceiling was imposed as the schools' base budgets were cut 5 percent for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Virginia's colleges and universities were permitted to replace half of those cuts by raising tuition, with any additional funds being held in state coffers.
"We could raise as much as the state would appropriate just through out-of-state tuition, so we didn't have to raise in-state tuition," Kim Ellertson, vice president for business affairs, said Friday.
For Radford, a 5 percent cut in the 1990-91 budget amounts to $1.3 million. The out-of-state tuition increase, delays in minor capital projects and cutbacks in purchasing supplies will offset the reduction.
Unlike their counterparts at Virginia Tech, who this week said that a pared budget would mean larger and maybe even fewer classes, Radford officials said the tightened budget likely would not affect teaching.
But the painful budgetary gymnastics for Virginia's colleges and universities still are not over. Officials must submit plans detailing how they intend to cope with the reductions, which Wilder does not want balanced on the backs of students and their parents.
"They want to make sure that how we administer the cuts is consistent with the governor's intentions," Ellertson said. "He made it pretty clear that his intention was to cut out the fat, but we don't have a lot of fat."
In other business, the board:
Approved an agreement with Tech to ensure that graduation ceremonies at both schools do not occur on the same weekend - which happened last spring, clogging New River Valley motels and restaurants.
Approved inserting the words "sexual preference" in the school's equal-employment hiring statement. The change had been recommended by the university affairs council.
by CNB