The Portland State University Board of Trustees’ finance committee decided Wednesday to lower its proposed tuition increase to 4.9% for next year.
That proposal goes before the full board for approval next week.
The PSU board voted last month to approve an up to 11% tuition increase, but its finance committee decided to change that after learning they could receive more funding from the state.
“Our best estimate is that we take a little bit longer game plan here,” PSU’s acting president Stephen Percy said at a Wednesday meeting.
“We keep our tuition under 5% this year and we will go back and look at our, under new leadership, our budget, see where we are, see what our needs are, understand our cost-drivers next year.”
A new budget bill from the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission, HECC, allots more than $836 million for public universities. That’s about $100 million more for those schools than in Gov. Kate Brown’s original proposed budget.
State universities can raise tuition on their own if it's an increase of 5% or less. Any tuition increase above 5% requires a review by HECC.
On Thursday, three public universities are scheduled to meet with the commission to discuss their increases. The University of Oregon was proposing up to a 9.7% increase and students at the Oregon Institute of Technology may see a 9% increase next year. Southern Oregon University has the steepest proposed increase: up to 13.5%.
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