Student Government Association President David Rosen appointed senators and executive cabinet members for the SGA tuition and fees taskforce Wednesday night.
Rosen appointed senators Stephen Quezada as the chair of the taskforce, Salman Amanullah as the vice-chair, and Van Hua, Jonas Chin, Aleah Al-Sad, Mary Elhardt, Shameria Davis, Vice President Sam Dike, Regent Judah Johns and himself as members.
As its first order of business, the taskforce will formulate either a bill or resolution to detail how a "tuition freeze" proposed by SGA officers would be implemented.
A tuition freeze is when an entering freshman’s rates are locked in for four years, Rosen said, adding the policy would make college costs more predictable.
"The goal of this taskforce is to publicly build support for our plan, to finalize that guaranteed tuition plan and to provide immediate relief to our constituents over the next year through this tuition freeze," Rosen said.
In August, Rosen said he would challenge UH Interim President John Rudley to freeze tuition for the 2008-2009 school year.
UH tuition increased 6.9 percent this year, Rosen said, and the University of Texas increased by only 1 percent.
A UT System spokesman told The Daily Cougar in August that UT’s tuition is set every two years, and that in the 2006-2007 school year the Austin campus’ tuition and fees increased by an average of 9.44 percent.
UH’s tuition and fees are set each year by the UH System Board of Regents.
Rosen said that in 2003 the Texas Legislature deregulated tuition in the belief that market prices should be responsible for setting tuition and fee rates at public schools in the state. Four years later, none of the state’s colleges have seen tuition go down from 2003 levels, but instead rates have gone up from between 25 to 52 percent, he said. UH tuition and fees have risen by 45 percent since the deregulation, Rosen said.
"Tuition deregulation has been a miserable failure at providing stability for people our age who are going to college," Rosen said. "It has disproportionably affected the working students, it has disproportionably affected working families and it has hurt nontraditional students beyond any words I can give them."
The State Legislature allocated millions more dollars this past year to higher education than in years past with the "specific intent of slowing down this endless barrage of tuition and fee increases," he said.
"They gave hundreds of millions of more dollars out of the state’s budget to colleges this year to specifically say, ‘take it easy on the kids,’" Rosen said.
Rosen said when the State Legislation deregulated tuition they put up "a few safe guards" in the bill, including a mandatory tuition and fee advisory committee that meets every year with voting student members. In another safeguard, each university must have student fee forums for students to have a place to talk to people about any tuition increases, he said. The third safeguard is that with every dollar increase, 20 cents would go to scholarships and financial aid, Rosen said.
At UH, Rosen said, the tuition and fee advisory committee currently has three students involved, including himself, Dike and SGA Director of Finance Kelly Harper and that UH student fee forums have had a low turn-out.
Rosen said a few factors have made this year unique.
"Enrollment is up," he said, "secondly, electricity prices are down. Thirdly, donations from our alumni are up. Fourthly, because this is the second year of the biennium and because our State Legislation meets only once every two years, they allocate money for every two years. We’re getting a little bit more money from them than we expect."
Because of these four factors, Rosen said it is even more imperative that the tuition freeze takes place.
"Everything they ask for from here on out is a luxury, not a necessity," he said.
Dike announced that plans to create a financial aid advisory committee for the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid are in motion.
Dike said the committee would be comprised of four students appointed by SGA, three faculty members appointed by the Faculty Senate and three staff members appointed by the Staff Council.
SGA Regent Judah Johns did not attend the meeting. Senators Bethany Johns, Vanessa Hall, Mary Elhardt, Zadia Murphy and Rey Rodriguez also did not attend.
