Plan to let South Carolina colleges raise tuition rates axed out of Senate budget

College and universities won’t be able to raise rates even if they take money meant to freeze tuition costs.

A plan by the state Senate to allow colleges and universities to increase tuition rates for in-state students by up to 2% is now out of its $13.8 billion budget plan.

Senators this week opted to take out the provision to allow tuition increases even if the schools take the tuition mitigation money meant to freeze tuition rates for in-state students.

The idea was proposed after colleges and universities asked for $128 million more in annual money from state coffers to pay for tuition mitigation, increased scholarships and increase cost of operation, much more than what lawmakers were able to allocate.

The Senate budget includes $67.9 million in tuition mitigation money for the state’s four year colleges, and an additional $10 million for technical colleges.

The House budget included $57.5 million for the state’s colleges and universities to freeze tuition rates.

House and Senate budget writers will have to negotiate the final amount for tuition mitigation in a conference committee.

Lawmakers only have $662 million in new annual money available to allocate. Millions is eaten up by raises for teachers, state employees, state health insurance premiums and increased Medicaid costs. Budget writers had choose among $1.7 billion in annual requests. The Senate even wants to accelerate the planned income tax further reducing the pot of available annual dollars.

Fox six consecutive year lawmakers have included money in their budget to freeze tuition rates to help students cope with the rising costs of higher education.

The idea to allow schools to increase tuition was not supported by McMaster, most likely would not be supported by the House, and would have been a point of contention during a conference committee to finalize a spending plan.

Senators included a provision in its budget plan to require schools instituting a tuition or fee increase to provide an analysis of why an increase is necessary and all the cost-saving measures taken to minimize a tuition hike.

“We don’t know how much of that (money) that they asked for was necessary or was that for everything they wanted to do and maybe a tremendous raise on increasing the number of faculty by 10%. We don’t know what that entails. That’s the whole problem,” said state Sen. Ronnie Cromer, R-Newberry, who oversees higher education spending on the Senate Finance Committee.