ST PAUL, Minn. — The University of Minnesota is, once again, facing tough questions from lawmakers after recently asking the state for millions more in funding.
School officials are citing a tuition shortfall due to a big drop in enrollment, KARE 11 reported on Tuesday.
The school's budget director, Julie Tonneson, first shared the concerns with the House's higher education committee two weeks ago. That prompted the committee chair, Rep. Gene Pelowski, to ask Tonneson back to provide more details about why enrollment projections were so far off.
"There have been impacts on continuing student variables for the Twin Cities campus and all student variables on all other campuses, which we did not get right in our estimates," said Tonneson.
Tonneson blames the pandemic for disrupting enrollment predictions, but data shows enrollment declining at a majority of its campuses for the last decade.
She cites a decrease in transfer and graduate students, along with an inability to retain students. Students are not required to say why they're leaving their college studies, but cited some reasons as health problems, childcare struggles and not being prepared enough in high school.
Tonneson did say that freshman enrollment is seeing record numbers in the Twin Cities.
"In fact, we’ve had historically high, large entering classes the last two years and things are looking up for this fall, as well, so demand is high," said Tonneson.
Except, some of those answers were not enough to satisfy some committee members.
Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, says, "Enrollments were declining prior to the pandemic."
"But it has been happening in new ways and deeper than we expected," replied Tonneson.
If the UMN doesn't get the funding, it says it could raise tuition as much as 11% in its next two-year budget, which includes 2024 and 2025. Click here to see how the UMN lays out specific tuition increases for the next years that also include 1% and 3.5% increases.
Tonneson said the school will also be forced to make internal budget cuts.
"I also want to convey that under any scenario, even with full funding by the state of all the University’s requested items, it will be necessary for the University to implement some level of internal budget cuts in order to balance the budget," said Tonneson, adding she wouldn't know until spring more specific details about what would be cut.
Rep. Ginny Klevorn, D-Plymouth, said, "I'm very concerned about the students who are in class today paying the costs of these small incremental cuts over time."
"We are actively working on that and trying to view into the future to address those issues now," said Tonneson.
UMN leadership is expected to testify once again next Tuesday and discuss its full budget - which is now more than a billion dollars. A large portion of it, $950 million, would be to buy its medical center on campus should the Fairview-Sanford mega-merger go through.
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