Collegiate Times

The Virginia General Assembly crafted a budget without any new cuts to higher education, but out-of-state students will be asked to partially compensate for Virginia’s lack of funds.

After removing a tax on auxiliary fees, which would have taken university money collected from students, the legislators increased the capital fee paid by out-of-state students from $10 per credit hour to $15 per credit hour.

The increase will cost out-of-state students taking an average course load between $150 and $175 per year. It adds on to an out-of-state tuition and fee package that is already more than double that of in-state students.

A Virginia Tech press release said the General Assembly considered adding the same fee for in-state students, but ultimately dropped that stipulation from the budget.

Kirsten Nelson, a spokeswoman for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, said this one fee is unlikely to affect a student’s college decision.

“I think it’s difficult to say at this point whether that is going to change whether an out-of-state student decides to go to a public institution of higher education in Virginia,” Nelson said. “Students who are paying out-of-state tuition are already paying two to three times the amount that an in-state student is paying.”

According to SCHEV statistics from the fall 2009 semester, 11.1 percent of undergraduates enrolled in Virginia public universities are out-of-state students. That number stands to increase, as 14.9 percent of newly enrolled freshmen were from out of state.

As of fall 2009, 6,008 undergraduate students — more than 25 percent of Tech’s undergraduate population — paid out-of-state tuition. Out-of-state tuition and fees totaled more $10,000 for a full-time undergraduate student this semester. Similar in-state students paid under $5,000.

Nelson does not think the increased fee, within itself, will change the desirability of Virginia’s public universities.

“I would suspect that given the amount of tuition they are already willing to pay to go to an out-of-state institution in Virginia, an extra $150 a year might prove negligible,” Nelson said.

However, she said a combination of rising tuition and fees could cause a downturn in out-of-state enrollment.

“If there are a number of these types of things — say you increase base tuition, you increase room and board and you increase this — it could get to the breaking point,” Nelson said. “It could get to the point where it may discourage some students from applying to Virginia schools as out-of-state students.”

Nelson said SCHEV was happy with the legislation’s decision to refrain from making further cuts to higher education. The budget, for fiscal years 2010-12 does not call for furlough days for state employees.

A version of this article appeared in the Mar 26 issue of the Collegiate Times.