Some of Missouri’s top college leaders dispute the fundamental reason some lawmakers want to limit college tuition hikes. Senator Gary Nodler of Joplin is working on a way to limit public college tuition increases to the cost of living index. He admits it’s a work in progress, but he’s firm on the reason he wants to do it.”We need to find a way to protect the consumers and the students and the families and to do something about the pressure of skyrocketing tuition rates,” he says. Skyrocketing? Not from Barbara Dixon’s point of view. She’s the President of Truman State University and the President of the Missouri Council on Public Higher Education. She says in the 2005-2006 school year the average public higher education tuition increase was 4.6 percent, two and a half points below the national average. Presidents such as Ken Dobbins from Southeast Missouri State admit tuition jumped for about three years when state appropriations were deeply cut. But he says the increases could have been worse. He says his school made cuts in programs and faculty. He says tuitions would have gone up another fifty percent at his school from 2001-2006 without the cuts. He says a public perception that tuition rates went up by amounts greater than the schools needed to recover from state budget cuts is erroneous. Nodler is still working on his proposal. A senate committee is waiting to see what changes he’ll suggest.
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