Public service and public policy junior Casey Clowes asks President Crow a question at Thursday's Q&A. (Photo by Laura Davis)
ASU President Michael Crow said students should not expect to see their tuition rise more than 3 percent in the “foreseeable future” at a question and answer session Thursday.
Crow, who spoke at the Polytechnic campus, defined the foreseeable future as “eight, nine, 10 years out.”
Crow said he was hopeful that tuition increases would be less than three percent, though he did not specify whether that number would be limited only to in-state tuition rates.
“In our long-range business model, we have called for a dramatic reduction in the rate of tuition increases,” he said.
The president said tuition increases would help raise faculty salaries, 75 percent of which have not been raised in five years.
However, when the topic was brought up again, later on in the session, Crow said increased tuition would help cover additional expenditures to match the growing student body and philanthropic investments into start-up companies.
“ASU has insufficient resources for even a fraction of the investments we wish to make,” he said.
More tuition dollars could be used to attract new faculty in addition to raising the salaries of current faculty, Crow said.
“The price of the faculty that we hire is determined not by us – it is determined by the labor market,” he said.
Crow said ASU should be an institution with a faculty that can equal or exceed that of any other, whether it is public or private.
Crow said that ASU wishes to grow its Greek community, which comprises 50 organizations and 4,000 students.
ASU’s former Greek houses, nicknamed “Alpha Drive,” were all vacated in spring 2012 and demolished soon after.
“Those facilities were torn down because they were dilapidated and not subject to repair,” Crow said.
The president said there are plans to start developing new Greek housing in the next academic year, and the University could have started sooner if there had not been delays at Alpha Drive. He did not name specific problems.
“Ultimately, on one place or another, we will facilitate the development for some kind of Greek communities within the umbrella of the University itself,” Crow said.
Marketing student Edlyn Ruiz, a member of the Latino Students Association, thanked Crow for his support of ASU's DREAMers and requested his advice for students who have just qualified for new tuition rates under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals plan.
Crow said he was excited to implement new changes from national policy. He said the Arizona Board of Regents is considering a new tuition rate for DACA-eligible students that would fall between in-state and out-of-state rates.
Ruiz said she is pleased with Crow’s leadership and support for DREAMers, as well as new bipartisan immigration reform talks in Congress and President Barack Obama’s recent Las Vegas speech on the topic.
She said new ASU programs such as the DREAM zone, which will help students handle their situations, are encouraging.
As far as possible tuition change goes, Ruiz said she would have to wait and see before she has a full opinion on it.
“I think it’s a tough situation, because it was very broad, very generalized, but I think it’s a step in the right direction,” she said.
Reach the reporter at ammedeir@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @amy_medeiros.
