The rise in tuition was the main focus of the Faculty Senate when its members gathered on Monday afternoon for their monthly meeting.
Graduate and Professional Student Council representatives and faculty members brought up their concerns in regards to the future of tuition at the UA, given the budget cuts.
During the open session of the meeting, GPSC treasurer Jared Brock discussed his meeting two weeks ago in Washington with five other members of GPSC and a congresswoman from Arizona. During this meeting, they discussed the difference in interest rates among graduate and professional students and undergraduate students.
“The 2013-14 school year was the first time in history that graduate professional students were charged a different interest rate than undergrads,” Brock said.
Brock also said that there has been an increase in the amount graduate students are charged compared to undergraduate students.
Moises Paiewonsky, an associate professor and interim assistant director for the Fred Fox School of Music, questioned how he will be able to inform future students on the amount of scholarship money that would go toward their tuition in the future when tuition keeps on rising.
“In my particular department, I have noticed that often times, the students know what tuition is going to be costing them at other schools,” he said. “We have a hard time letting the students know what part of the tuition is going to be covered by scholarship money, because we do not know what is happening to tuition.”
President Ann Weaver Hart assured Paiewonsky that UA finds out their tuition for the coming year relatively earlier than most other public schools and that only private schools would be able to find out much sooner. She also mentioned that there will be a public, open mic tuition hearing on April 20 in the afternoon.
The meeting also saw a discussion in regards to another funding question. The topic of research funding was brought up when the senate proposed an important ethical question that led to great debate.
The question consisted of the fact that now that tax payer money is no longer being used to fund research and it is money from students, how much of it should be spent on research? Most in the senate could agree that although research is crucial to the university, the university has to be more reasonable about what it is putting money into.
The remainder of the meeting focused on the topic of engaged learning experiences.
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