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Emily Kaiser

Kaler: Dayton funding proposal could lead to U tuition increase

State of the University
University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler delivered his State of the University speech Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013 at Coffman Memorial Union on the Minneapolis campus.
Jennifer Simonson | MPR News file

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If the University of Minnesota doesn't receive close to the $65 million budget increase request from the state, tuition is likely to go up, University President Eric Kaler said on MPR News with Tom Weber Thursday.

Gov. Mark Dayton proposed giving the University roughly half of what it says is necessary for that freeze. In the next two years, the University is asking for a total of $148.2 million more in funding.

"Being able to freeze tuition is a very high priority for me, but at the end of the day we're not going to hurt the excellence of the University, we're not going to cut programs in order to freeze tuition, we're not going to subtract from opportunities," Kaler said. "An amount of money that doesn't meet the need we've laid out, which we've arrived by very careful and thorough process would mean there would need to be a modest tuition increase."

Kaler said he wants to put the public back into the public university.

"There's been a dramatic cost shift from state support to tuition support over the past 20 years or so," he said. "I think we should rebalance. I think we've got a strong economy; I think the University is incredibly important to that economy, has been for 150 years. The public, I think, gets a great return on an investment in the University of Minnesota and I'd like to see them make a bigger one.

In 1997, the state paid 70 percent of the funding for tuition. This year the state contribution is 42 percent.

These students and I want, by and large, the same thing. I want the University of Minnesota to be more diverse and more welcoming. I want us to represent the faces of the people of Minnesota. We have a long way to go. It is right now a very white place and we have a variety of activities going on to help grow populations of underrepresented at the U. The folks who came to visit me in my office were not happy with the pace of change at the University. I'm not happy with the pace of change at the University either, but it's a big place with a long, long history of consultation and consensus building.

A caller asked what the University is doing to build student diversity:

Correction (Feb. 19, 2015): An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the state's contribution to tuition. The current version is correct.