Higher Education Budget Expansion Lacks Solutions To Rising Tuition

Board Votes To Spread Students' Pain To The Taxpayers

BISMARCK, N.D - Today, the North Dakota Board of Higher Education approved a 53% general fund spending increase that would still allow tuition for students to increase by 4% each year. The approved budget includes a 25% increase in baseline funding as well as a 28% increase in so-called "one-time expenditures."

"The Board of Higher Education has now decided that it is time for the taxpayers to feel the same pain that students have been feeling for the last decade," said state policy director Dustin Gawrylow. "Tuition has more than doubled for all students in North Dakota in the last decade. In the same time, taxpayer funding of higher education has increase by 50%. This new round of funding will now match the students' percentage cost increase without saving the students one red penny."

College Graduates in North Dakota as of 2006 were ranked as having the 3^rd highest debt upon graduation according to The Project on Student Debt.

"We need to look for ways to reduce the cost of college education for students, reduce the amount of debt those students carry after graduation, and reduce the cost to those graduates who are either paying taxes themselves already, or will be in the near future. We need to send the message to graduates that we want them to stay and work in North Dakota, and that we as a state are doing everything possible to allow them the ability to afford to stay. By increasing the cost to taxpayers and students alike, we continue to price North Dakota out of the market as an option for young people to stay and afford to pay back their debt," concluded Gawrylow.