UNT president announces budget cuts in wake of financial problems

[Ben Gooding]

If anything, raise the tuition. Get better facilities, teachers, dorms, etc. In everything in life you get what you pay for.

[Arkstfan]

When I was a college student at AState in the mid-80's my tuition covered 1/3rd of the cost of my education. My daughter is a freshman and the state covers about 1/3rd. That's a massive swing in a relatively short time.

This is why it is critical that UNT hit this issue before it became a crisis.

There are schools out there who are using debt to operate, there are many more who have debt at very high levels of their total expenditure.

They will not survive enrollment declines, especially if state funding declines as well. Go look at a list of schools that dropped football, you will notice they tend to fall into two ranges. The 1950's when the GI Bill students moved into the economy and were followed in the late 60's and early 70's when the boomers moved through and just before that when attending college no longer provided a draft deferment.

Schools that don't have a cushion built in and aren't budgeting responsibly are going to have problems. With the decline in enrollment coming, over-reliance on student fees will create its own crisis. Some schools are using those fees to fund their debt as well as their athletic program. There will be price point competition coming as the supply dries up, you will see schools with a lot of resources either holding cost increases below inflation or you will see more aggressive scholarship programs or both.

AState is positioning for the change by increasing fees and tuition below the inflation rate while raising the pay for teaching positions faster than most universities to help in reputation rankings. The other prong of attack is private ventures. AState is adding a med school and a Mexico campus that are both private schools owned by the University Foundation and are expected to greatly increase the Foundation's rate of return on investments and mostly escape state oversight.