ASUNM senators held an emergency meeting Monday night about UNM’s $5.4 million budget shortfall and subsequent measures to bump up tuition costs.
The Board of Regents is expected to recommend an 8-10 percent increase on top of a 3.2 percent increase mandated by the state Legislature, a tuition increase of roughly $300 per student.
“I’m optimistic tuition is going to stay around 8-10 percent,” ASUNM President Laz Cardenas said. “I have to applaud the administration for including ASUNM. However, although I am optimistic, I am skeptical.”
The regents will determine next month how much to raise tuition and how that money will be spent.
Cardenas said he called the emergency meeting because he’s concerned the administration hasn’t detailed where additional tuition has been allocated within the University.
The Senate approved a resolution asking the administration to balance tuition increases and maintain UNM’s academic standards, keep costs low for students and avoid cutting core classes or faculty positions. The resolution also asked administrators to set up a website tracking how tuition dollars are spent.
Cardenas co-wrote the resolution and read it to the full ASUNM Senate.
“Our tuition is expected to go less to executive salaries and more toward faculty and academic programs,” he said.
Nearly 30 people attended the meeting to hear and debate the joint resolution, which was sponsored by Sen. Nick Ramos.
The resolution was addressed to other University governing bodies, including President David Schmidly, the regents, the Provost’s Office, Faculty Senate President Richard Wood and GPSA President Lissa Knudsen.
Knudsen attended the meeting and said she does not support a tuition increase, but will not be surprised when tuition goes up.
“I genuinely believe creating any additional barriers to education is not a good long-term strategy,” she said. “It may seem unrealistic or
inevitable, but somebody needs to think it. We need to get back to the drawing board and looking at what we thought was impossible and making it possible.”
Other groups developed cost-containment measures that could potentially offset UNM’s budget shortfall and deter a high tuition increase.
Former UNM Professor Calsue Murray said after the meeting he was concerned universities were becoming too profit-driven.
“Education should not be sold; there should not be a price tag,” Murray said.
Murray, an educator for more than 35 years, said schools systems like UNM are top heavy with administrators who receive the highest salaries.
“If it was up to me, the top salaries would go to the best teachers, not to administrators. I was an administrator myself,” he said. “A great majority of administrators’ contribution to educating a student is minuscule compared to what a teacher in a classroom is doing. There are too many ineffective administrators.”
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Student Dan Quan said cutting administration salaries could help struggling departments.
“It’s really needed in some places,” he said. “The chemistry department is pretty run down, and you wonder why a lot of the students are not chemistry majors. … A lot of chemistry classes are lab- based, but the classes for the labs can’t really handle anything.”
Student John Tennison said he would be more open to the idea of a tuition increase if the money were going to improve the quality of education.
“If I knew the money was going to that, I’d be more willing to accept the tuition increase, than if it was going to administrators,” he said.
