“I’m very pleased that we’re able to hold tuition flat,” board Chairman Sam Collins said after the trustees met at the University of Maine campus. “It has been a priority of all the trustees to make tuition affordable in Maine.”
The decision keeps tuition and the mandatory fees at Orono, the system’s flagship campus, at $10,606, and makes the UMaine System something of an outlier nationally. In the past five years, Maine is the only state where tuition, adjusted for inflation, hasn’t increased, according to the College Board. The next-lowest increase was 3 percent in Montana. Nationwide, in-state tuition has increased 17 percent over the same period at public four-year institutions, according to the board’s figures.
Rebecca Wyke, the system’s vice chancellor of finance and administration, said the governor’s proposed budget, which would increase system funding from the state for the first time in three years, made the freeze possible.
The governor’s budget, which is being debated in Augusta, calls for boosting state funding by 1.7 percent, to $179.2 million, for the fiscal year ending June 2016, and by 1.93 percent, to $182.6 million, for the following fiscal year. That’s about half of what the system requested.
“Thank you so much,” UMaine junior Connor Scott told the trustees after the vote, noting that he and five of his siblings all attend system schools. “This is definitely a step in the right direction.”
UMaine-Farmington sophomore Jamie Austin, 19, said the tuition freeze is critical for her.
“It means I can keep going,” said Austin, who is studying political science. She already gets some financial aid and does work-study, but she also has been forced to take out student loans.
Paying for college is “definitely challenging,” said Austin, who expects to graduate with about $25,000 in student loan debt. The average Maine college graduate has $30,000 in student debt, according to The Project on Student Debt.
