Kentucky’s Council on Postsecondary Education, the state’s coordinating board for higher education, has voted to approve a cap on tuition increases for public universities at no more than 3% over a two-year period, clearing the way for a 2% hike Western Kentucky University has sought.

The increase, which earned “yes” votes from 10 of the board’s members – including its student representative Colby Birkes – was a divisive one.

During their meeting Thursday, board members openly grappled with the dueling priorities of slowing the rising cost of college for students and covering ballooning cost increases at campuses throughout Kentucky. The state’s college campuses have nearly $8 billion in deferred infrastructure maintenance costs, CPE President Aaron Thompson noted as one example.

The entire conversation fell under the backdrop of declining state spending on higher education, which has fallen precipitously in the last decade, board members said.

“The cost has been shifted toward students,” said Birkes, a law student at the University of Louisville Brandeis Law School.

Reluctantly voting to authorize tuition increases, Birkes referenced a list of state lawmakers whom, he said, have refused to meet with him. Birkes called lawmakers’ shrinking state support for higher education over the last decade “reprehensible.”

For example, a recent report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy said Kentucky ranks among the 10 worst states nationally for higher education cuts since before the Great Recession, with lawmakers spending nearly 30%, or $2,977, less per student in 2019 than in 2008.

Under the motion approved by the board, public universities can raise tuition by no more than 3% over 2021-22 and 2022-23 and no more than 2% in any one year.

For public community and technical colleges, the increase is capped at no more than $5 per credit hour over the two-year period and no more than $3 per credit hour in any one year.

Further, the board authorized institutions to submit non-resident undergraduate tuition and fees and market competitive tuition and fee rates for graduate and online courses.

For its part, WKU has contended a 2% increase is necessary in light of historically declining or flat state investment and uncertainty about fall 2021 enrollment, given that efforts to recruit high school students have been stymied.

WKU is currently weighing budget cuts to offset a nearly $8 million shortfall in its upcoming fiscal year budget. WKU President Timothy Caboni has said revenue raised through a tuition increase will go toward sorely needed faculty and staff raises.