While most State University of New York students noticed this year's $950 tuition increase, the first general tuition increase in seven years, the university has yet to see any benefits, according to Provost Elizabeth Capaldi.
Capaldi discussed the struggles of breaking even within the confines of a dropping budget at Wednesday's meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee in Capen Hall.
"We all know that there was a tuition increase, but that we have no more money than we did before," said Capaldi.
Capaldi said for every extra dollar of tuition paid by UB students there was a proportionate drop in the amount of money from taxes allocated to the State University of New York in the state budget.
"We've always said that money is money, and so if money comes from somewhere, the flavor of that money doesn't matter," said Capaldi.
But this year, Capaldi said, the source of funding matters more because there is a shift in the amount of funding that comes from students.
"It does (matter) for the students. We've shifted the burden to the students to pay more in tuition for the same amount of spending we saw last year," she said.
According to Capaldi, the original proposed tuition increase was $1,200 for in-state students and $5,000 for out-of-state students, and with these increases, the budget would have balanced itself.
However, with only a $950 increase for in-state students and a $2,000 increase for out-of-state students approved, the budget was still unbalanced.
"With these numbers, we knew that there would be money problems," said Capaldi.
She went on to explain that as tuition rises, the university itself ends up spending more money to proportionately increase the amount of funds paid out in scholarships.
"Overall, we lose money," said Capaldi, attributing the loss not only to scholarships, but also to graduate and medical schools at UB, which, she said, actually take more money to run than they receive in tuition.
"There's nothing evil about (the budget)," Capaldi said. "It's not as though there's extra money just laying around, we're just trying to keep everybody whole."
