Colleges seek to head off tuition cap
House budget ties increases to national index

Published: Friday, March 23, 2007 - 2:00 am

By Anna Simon
CLEMSON BUREAU
asimon@greenvillenews.com

CLEMSON -- Tuition increases at public universities and colleges in South Carolina could be capped at 5 percent for the coming school year.

The House recently approved a state budget containing a proviso to cap tuition at the Higher Education Price Index.

The measure, along with the rest of the House budget proposal, next goes before the Senate on the path toward final budget approval.

A tuition cap in last year's House budget proposal was opposed by schools and died in the Senate.

"We remain philosophically opposed to a tuition cap. In the absence of adequate state funding, it simply becomes a quality cap," Clemson University President Jim Barker recently told members of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The current move has raised new concern. "We would hope the Senate would see the situation in a different light," said University of South Carolina spokesman Russ McKinney.

The index, called HEPI, measures inflation in terms of goods and services which colleges and universities must pay for. It covers categories from administrative salaries to utility costs.

The number, established by the Commonfund Institute annually, is sort of like a cost of living increase or a consumer price index for higher education institutions.

The HEPI is released each spring, but the House budget bill calls for the prior year's number to be used. The 2006 figure was 5 percent.

This year, Clemson's tuition is $9,400 a year, based on two semesters, for full-time in-state students, a 5.8 percent increase over the prior year. Under the budget proposal, it could rise by no more than $470, to $9,870.

University of South Carolina's tuition, currently $7,808 a year for in-state students, could increase no more than $390, to $8,198. Last year, tuition rose 6.75 percent.

A tuition cap is needed "to keep college affordable for students," said House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston.

But state Rep. Dan Cooper, R-Piedmont, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he opposes a cap and entrusts tuition decisions to school trustees who are elected by the Legislature.