Texas Tech students, faculty, staff and administrators come out ahead in the 2008-2009 budget.
Tech's Board of Regents approved a freeze on tuition and fees in May, and a pay raise averaging 2 percent for faculty, staff and administrators in August.
The tuition freeze follows five years of tuition-rate increases at the university, which increased tuition approximately $2,000 since 2003 to its current price of $7,083 for a full-time-student course load. The board previously raised tuition approximately 5 percent for the 2007-2008 academic year, according to Tech's Web site.
"This gives the board, the administration and the school itself time to look at how we can best choose our dollars - try to slow down the increases on the backs of the students," said Scott Dueser chariman of the Board of Regents.
The university chose to freeze tuition and fees partially out of a concern that students from middle-class backgrounds are being priced out of a college education, said David McClure, assistant vice chancellor for communications.
"The goal is to have affordable, quality education," he said. "We need to continue to push the bar on the quality of education and the quality of students who come in, but affordability, we think, is a key component of attracting students to come here."
As a result of its efforts in providing affordability, university administrators are left with the task of funding the raises and operations without the $5.6 million the university would have gained through an initial proposed tuition increase of 4.4 percent.
Gene Wilde, professor of fish biology, said half of the faculty merit raise will come from fund balances, or leftover monies in the budget, while the other half will be funded by individual departments.
Departments are financing their share of the raises in a number of ways, including through a process of attrition - leaving about 40 faculty positions open, McClure said.
Despite a 12 percent increase of incoming freshmen projected in a report to the board earlier this month, Wilde said he does not anticipate immediate problems in Tech's student-faculty ratio, but believes it is "one thing you would expect to hear if enrollment increased a lot and the faculty numbers were held in line."
Regardless of other cutbacks that departments plan to make in the upcoming semester, Wilde said the raise is a feature of the budget welcomed by Tech faculty.
"It is something, and I think people are grateful for that," Wilde said of the raise, though he admitted "it is rather modest."
Tech faculty received a 3 percent raise in 2007-2008 - more than two percentage points less than the national average for faculty raises, according to information provided by the American Association of University Professors.
The highest-paid faculty members, full professors, last year had an average salary of almost $100,000 - making them the 10th-highest-paid professors on AAUP's list, which includes data from 52 Texas public and private institutions.
"I think if you look at the demographics on that, we're certainly not the worst, but we're not the best," Dueser said regarding salary comparisons with other universities. "You just continue to do the best you can and get the most to them.
"Our faculty and staff need to have raises, they deserve to have raises, and that's something we need to continue to do."
While the raise is part of an effort to make the university more attractive to current and prospective faculty, McClure said the tuition freeze already could be playing a role in attracting more students to Tech.
With the influx of new freshmen and with an expected rise in student body enrollment, McClure said the university could soon benefit from increased state funding based on the number of student hours taught at the university.
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