Finance & Business Operations Committee to meet April 23 to begin review of tuition, mandatory fees for 2019-20

The Finance and Business Operations Committee of the Tennessee Board of Regents will meet by telephone conference call at 3 p.m. CT Tuesday, April 23, to begin discussion of student tuition and mandatory fees for the 2019-20 academic year at Tennessee’s community colleges and colleges of applied technology.

The meeting is the first of up to three that the committee will hold to review and ultimately make its recommendations on tuition and fees to the full board. Other meetings are tentatively set for May 14 and June 4. The committee’s recommendations will be considered by the full Board of Regents at its June 20-21 quarterly meeting at Volunteer State Community College, when the board will set tuition and mandatory fees for the next academic year.

The conference call meeting is open to the public. Anyone wishing to listen may contact Board Secretary Sonja Mason at Sonja.mason@tbr.edu or 615-366-3927 by 4:30 pm Monday, April 22,  to obtain call-in information.

Tuition is the basic charge for enrollment. Mandatory fees are additional charges paid by all students enrolled in a particular college,  such as activity and technology fees, and vary slightly among the colleges.

Increases in tuition and mandatory fees at Tennessee’s public colleges and universities must fall within a binding range to be set by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission after the Tennessee General Assembly approves the overall state budget, which includes state appropriations for public higher education, later this spring.  THEC has set a tentative range that would allow combined tuition and mandatory fee increases of up to 2.5 percent, based on the higher education budget recommendations that it submitted to state budget officials earlier.  That ceiling is not expected to change significantly.