Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1986 [PAGE 490]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1986]

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

479

nual meeting of the Finance and Audit Committee. At 11:15 a.m., the board met as a Committee of the Whole.

BOARD MEETING AS A COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE

The committee met to receive a presentation from students concerning the policy of differential tuition charges for undergraduate students, a policy based upon the fact that instructional costs are higher for upperthan for lower-division students. Differential tuition was initiated in 1972 when a $50 surcharge was levied on juniors and seniors and has continued at increasing rates during succeeding years. In the present year, the difference is $254. (The trustees also had before them a document prepared annually, "Some Questions and Answers Concerning Tuition and Financial Aid: An Update for FY 1987," which provides a statistical review of the University's pattern of tuition charges and related information.) Student Trustees Scott Becker and Kevin Lamm had asked for die opportunity to present students who wished to protest the continuation of differential tuition, especially in the light of increasing student objection to it in recent years. Mr. Becker presented Bryan Levy, president of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Council at Urbana, who compared selected undergraduate majors and die considerable difference among them in costs — showing, he indicated, diat such costs in many instances were greater and more varied than the presently applied (and less precise) differential between upper and lower classmen. Rhonda Kirts, president of die Student Government Association at Urbana, presented a resolution diat had been unanimously approved by the association on February 12. (A copy of die resolution is filed with the secretary of the board for record.) The SGA recommended that the Board of Trustees gradually eliminate die differential tuition over a period of three to five years; and diat such a phase-out be carried out in a "revenue-neutral manner" so diat die University will not be faced widi the elimination of any programs designed to enhance academic quality. Miss Kiits stated diat a student's resources gradually diminished to die point that in die later years of college the differential was felt most severely. She emphasized that die policy encouraged students to manipulate dieir course selection program, e.g., to complete five semesters of work under die sixty-hour division (between die sophomore and junior years) and three semesters beyond that limit, dius avoiding die higher tuition charge for one semester. She predicted that if differential tuition were continued and die dollar amount continued to increase, more such manipulation would occur, and to the detriment of students' academic programs. Mr. Becker summed up die general arguments in favor of discontinuing or phasing out die differential policy and presented a five-year plan by which that could be done widiout loss of revenue. He did not ask for a vote on die plan at tiiis time.