Budget update: Oct. 21, 2020
October 21, 2020
Tuition and share services
— by Dan White, chancellor
If you weren't able to join us last Thursday for the forum on differentiated tuition,
you can view a recording on our UAF media page. The tuition forum served as a campus conversation about the differentiated tuition
for UAF and what the change would be for FY22. UAF’s differentiated tuition proposal
will still need to be approved by President Pitney and if approved by her, by the
Board of Regents (BOR) at the November 2020 board meeting.
Fundamentally our goal is to bring our community campus tuition in line with community
campuses across the country and bring our research university tuition in line with
our research university peers. The first step in this process is to freeze community
campus tuition by holding lower-division tuition flat. We are proposing a 2.5% increase
to upper-division and a 5% increase to graduate tuition. Over time we will be able
to separate the two tuition structures so that the community colleges/campus programs
charge one rate and research university programs charge a separate rate. This bifurcated
rate structure would be more consistent with our peers across the country.
UAF’s FY22 tuition proposal is proposed as follows:
| UAF Fall 2021 | Proposed Rate per Credit Hour | % Change | Difference per Credit Hour |
| Lower-Division | $234.00 | 0.0% | $0.00 |
| Upper-Division | $289.00 | 2.5% | $7.00 |
| Graduate Level | $539.00 | 5.0% | $27.00 |
| Nonresident Surcharge (NRS) | $566.00 | 0.0% | $0.00 |
On a separate note, we have continued progress towards a shared services model to help create breadth and depth to business functions across the university. Early this spring, I distributed a request for proposals for shared service hubs. Developing shared services for UAF was a key recommendation from the final report (PDF) of the Expedited Administrative Review process , which began in 2019 and was completed in 2020. My request for shared services centers received seven submissions from around campus. Two of the seven proposals best met the scope of the request by building on existing expertise but expanding to a larger service area.
Since launching the solicitation, a hybrid proposal was developed in June through the work of Dave Read, Kellie Fritze, Nickole Conley and Julie Queen. Feedback was also solicited from the campus community, which received over 80 responses with 275 comments on travel, procurement, proposals, and other. A high-level summary of comments can be found here .
Our next steps for shared services will be to hold a shared services forum in the next two weeks where we will discuss the current proposal, and how the shared services hub might be further refined and implemented. UAF executive officer Nickole Conley will be providing additional information around this model in the Cornerstone next week.
Thank you for choosing UAF.