TBR Finance & Business Operations Committee to meet May 18 to discuss student tuition, fees

The Tennessee Board of Regents’ Finance and Business Operations Committee will meet May 18 to continue its discussions on student tuition and mandatory fees for the 2017-18 academic year.

The meeting is the second in a series the committee is holding to review state funding and the revenue needs of the 13 community colleges and 27 colleges of applied technology in the TBR system. The first was April 13, and a third is scheduled for June 6. The discussions will culminate in a recommendation to the full board on tuition and fees at the board’s next regular quarterly meeting June 22-23.

The committee will meet by telephone conference call at 1 p.m. CT, Thursday, May 18. The conference call is open to the public and media to listen in. Anyone wishing to listen should contact TBR Communications Director Richard Locker at (615) 366-4417 or rick.locker@tbr.edu by 4:30 p.m. CT, Wednesday, May 17, for call-in information.

The committee’s May 18 meeting is for discussion only. Its recommendations on tuition and fees will be voted on at a later meeting. One of the goals of the committee is to address student affordability concerns. 

Under the state’s FOCUS (Focus on College and University Success) Act of 2016, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission issues a range of tuition and mandatory fee increases for in-state undergraduates that college and university governing boards must fall within when they approve the tuition and fees for their students. THEC sets the binding range after reviewing higher education funding in the overall state budget, which was approved by the General Assembly before it adjourned for the year on May 10. The commission approved a mandatory combined tuition and mandatory fee increase range of 0 to 4 percent during its quarterly meeting May 11. The combined tuition and mandatory fee increase for TBR institutions is expected to fall toward the mid-point of that range.

Mandatory fees are fees that all full-time students must pay, and differ from various course and program fees that are assessed only on students taking certain classes or activities. 

This is be the first budget cycle in which the Board of Regents will be approving the budgets and setting tuition and fees only for Tennessee’s community colleges and colleges of applied technology.  The new local governing boards for each of the six universities that were formerly part of the Board of Regents system will be approving their universities’ budgets and tuition and fees for the 2017-18 academic year.