Pitt to delay announcing tuition increases until summer

Pitt won’t announce any tuition increases until this summer, the University Board of… Pitt won’t announce any tuition increases until this summer, the University Board of Trustees declared last week.

At its meeting on Friday, the board approved a number of construction projects, a new audit committee, an eight-month late budget and set its agenda for the summer. The University’s 2009-10 budget began July 1 of last year.

Budget Committee Chairman Michael Bryson presented the budget for the board’s approval but said Pitt had been working off the same budget for most of the year.

“This was mostly a technicality,” Bryson said of the budget’s unanimous approval. “The numbers haven’t changed much since this summer.”

The board had previously delayed passing the University budget because the state’s appropriation bill for state-related schools wasn’t finalized until Dec. 17, when Gov. Ed Rendell signed the bill.

Bryson did not say whether the board had decided yet whether to raise tuition but pointed to increases during the past five years and said next year will likely follow that trend. Tuition increases over the past five years have ranged from 3.83 to 6.49 percent. Last year, Pitt raised tuition 3.83 percent from the previous year.

Bryson said the committee will likely look at the budget for fiscal year 2010-11 in late May. Tuition changes for that year, Bryson said, will not be announced until late June or early July, if the state’s appropriation comes in on time.

Last July, the budget and executive committees of the board approved the tuition hike, even though the state appropriation was held up in Harrisburg.

“We felt that was the only fair way to tell the students,” Bryson said. “We can’t delay things like that.”

Bryson said that there was some risk in approving the tuition hike without the state appropriation, in case the state money did not come to Pitt. He said that this year, the tuition decision will wait until the state appropriation comes in.

In his report to the board, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg addressed several issues, including Pitt’s recent bouts with the city over the student tuition tax and city tax revenue. He also talked about Pitt’s increased enrollment and National Institutes of Health funding. The perception that construction by nonprofit organizations takes land off of the city’s tax rolls “simply is not true,” Nordenberg said in his report.

He said that both the Sennott Square and Biomedical Science Tower buildings were built on “the most blighted block” of their respective streets, on sites that were already off the city’s tax rolls.

Committees of the board handle most of the decision making, and the majority of the discussion occurs at the committee meetings, Pitt spokesman John Fedele said. The board did not debate any of the measures at the meeting, and all of the motions passed unanimously.

The various committees will meet again on June 24, and the board will hold a general full meeting on June 25.

This Friday, the board also approved the new charter for the board’s new audit committee. The committee will oversee Pitt’s endowment and other investments.

Between June 2008 and June 2009, Pitt’s endowment lost more than 20 percent of its value, but Fedele said that value might not be accurate.

“The Chronicle of Higher Education” said that Pitt experienced a 21.3 percent loss from June 30, 2008 to June 30, 2009, falling from $2,333,602,000 to $1,837,216,000.

Pitt is in the middle of a capital campaign, meaning that increasing money in the endowment could throw off how accurate the total was, and Pitt’s endowment might have done worse in that period, Fedele said.