Tuition at community colleges and many state universities is set to jump again this fall. Students in a Tennessee Board of Regents university who are taking 12 credit hours can expect to pay an extra $120.

TBR had been considering even greater rate hikes, as it braced for deeper budget cuts than ultimately passed through. Still, state funding for TBR schools will hit its lowest level since 2001.

So TBR’s Dale Sims says its finance committee voted to get back much of that lost money through tuition hikes.

“What we’re doing is trying to replace a portion; what the committee’s action was, was to say we need to replace 80 percent of those lost dollars. That still means our institutions have to engage in budget cutting – spend-control, so to speak.”

Sims says the Board’s overall goal is to stabilize spending by next year, when federal stimulus dollars go away. But to achieve that, another tuition hike will have to follow.

WEB EXTRA:

The full Board of Regents will consider the rate hike later this month. To see the finance committee’s breakdown of how that will affect tuition at universities and community colleges, click here.

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