Budget Priorities

Summary: Each year the Governor releases a budget proposal on November 1st that outlines his proposed state budget, including potential increases/cuts to higher education funding and tuition- cap increase. This year, due to Colorado’s TABOR, the budget is extremely restricted, and the Governor proposed a .5% increase in higher education funding with a tuition cap of 2.3% and 2.5% for resident and non-resident students respectively. An increase of this size will result in the CSU administration experiencing a roughly 20-million-dollar deficit for the next fiscal year. Thus, the CSU administration will advocate for increased general funding and increased tuition caps. We will be advocating for the JBC to increase general funding if possible and maintain similar tuition caps to the Governor’s proposal.

Future Work: We will be meeting with Joint Budget Commission members throughout December and January to advocate for reasonable tuition caps below 3% for both resident and non-resident students. Specifically, through my experience as an out-of-state student, we will advocate to stop penalizing non-residents through allowing tuition to be increased by a greater margin. In addition, Colorado ranks 49th currently in higher education funding and we will be advocating a greater increase in general funding.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries: As CSU is a public university, state-funding impacts all students and will directly correlate with the cost of tuition for incoming students. Thus, for all current students and incoming students, it is imperative we advocate for increased funding and reasonable tuition caps. The CSU administration is also a direct beneficiary as often legislators are more apt to hear feedback from students who will be impacted by the rising costs of higher education.