Special report: The tuition trap

Oct. 02--CHAPTER 1: PAY US MORE, MORE, MORE

Kennia Carpinteyro, in her fifth year at Boise State University, wants to be an elementary school teacher.

When she graduates next school year -- she changed majors from music education, and that added some college time -- Carpinteyro (pronounced carp-in-TER-o) will have more than a diploma and hope for the future. She'll have student debt that's $19,000 and growing.

Carpinteyro, 22, cobbled together a plan to pay for school that includes grants, a job, living at home to save money and a scholarship from the Blue Thunder Marching Band where she plays piccolo. Borrowing fills in the gaps.

It costs more for students of Carpinteyro's generation to attend schools like Boise State than it cost their parents. And it's not just inflation's fault.

For decades, nothing -- not the State Board of Education, not the Legislature, not even the Great Recession -- has stopped the relentless rise in the cost of an education at Boise State. Tuition and fees have climbed 348 percent since 1993, a period when the cost of living rose 65 percent.

Tuition and fees at other Idaho public universities soared, too. At the University of Idaho, in-state undergraduate tuition and fees have risen even more than at Boise State -- 375 percent since 1993.

Idaho isn't alone. Across the country, public colleges have added costs to tuition and fees as expenses have mushroomed and the number of students going to schools has grown. Legislative appropriations have not grown at the same pace.

Tuition and fees accounted for 32 percent of the general education dollars the school received in 2004. By 2013, the latest numbers available, it was 51 percent.

Rising costs have driven some students from Boise State's campus. In surveys taken by just more than 1,000 students who left the university between 2009 and 2011, one-third cited work and financial concerns as reasons for not returning to school. Most said they couldn't afford to continue.

CHAPTER 2: A VISION TO MAKE BOISE STATE BIGGER AND BETTER

At Boise State, the squeeze in state support for higher education is compounded by ambitions to make the school bigger and better. Among the biggest causes of its rising cost of attendance are the explosion in campus construction, the creation of new programs and increases in hiring. These reflect the university's effort to become a more prestigious research university befitting a sophisticated city.

The changes have left Boise State's origins as a low-cost junior college little more than a historical footnote. In 2009, the College of Western Idaho became the Treasure Valley's community college, offering vocational education and freshman- and sophomore-level classes for about half the price of Boise State. Enrollment at CWI ballooned from 1,200 to nearly 10,000 in six years.

At Boise State, President Bob Kustra says two factors have driven the increases in tuition more than anything else.

The transformation Kustra describes reflects the vision he articulated after becoming president in 2003: to make Boise State a "metropolitan research university of distinction."

In a competitive market, colleges look for ways to stand out. Colleges seek to "improve their reputation by spending more," said Andy Carlson, a senior policy analyst for the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

Kustra brought to his job a keen political savvy learned from his years as an Illinois legislator and a Republican lieutenant governor from 1991 to 1998.

Under Kustra, Boise State has sought to connect some of its research work with Idaho's economy. For example, the university is doing research through materials science and engineering to identify and develop materials that will better withstand the extreme operating conditions in a nuclear power plant. That could be valuable to the Idaho National Laboratory, which looks at all facets of nuclear plants.

But his work to improve the university's reputation has not paid off yet, at least in the latest annual Forbes ranking of the top 650 U.S. colleges and universities. Boise State was ranked 625th. The College of Idaho ranked 260th, Brigham Young University-Idaho 351st, the University of Idaho 456th and Idaho State University 606th.

As plans unfolded around 2005 for a redesigned university, the school said it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. But it did not say how much of the burden would fall to tuition.

One example: In 2005, Micron Technology Inc. donated $5 million to help start a doctoral degree program in electrical and computer engineering. At the time Boise State said it would pay for the program through donations, grants and funds generated by enrollment growth. Today, Kustra acknowledges that students are paying, too.

CHAPTER 3: BOISE STATE BUILDS AND BUILDS

Kustra undertook the most aggressive building plan in the school's history, creating buildings for research, nursing, business and more -- much of it paid by students.

When the state came up short, Kustra raised money from private sources and student fees.

Students contributed $121.4 million toward four academic buildings, the student union building expansion, a garage and a pool, which students had requested a number of years earlier. Students paid for 74 percent of these buildings' total construction cost.

Sports facilities, such as the Stueckle Sky Center and the Caven-Williams Sports Complex, an indoor practice field, were funded through other means.

Beginning in 2006, Boise State levied what it called a "strategic facilities fee" on students to back construction bonds for the buildings. The cost: $25 a semester.

The fee has since risen to $260 a semester, or $520 a year, which is 8 percent of the 2014-15 tuition and fees for in-state undergraduates. School officials have said the fee could rise to $300 a semester.

When the fee first came up, there was little dissent.

Students are now contributing money for two future buildings -- one for fine arts, one for science -- that are in Boise State's plans without construction dates.

Many students seem impressed by the campus skyline.

"It's a good look," said Madison Henken, a freshman from Washington who is majoring in athletic training.

Jordan Saenz, a communications major from San Francisco who said Boise State is cheaper than schools in California and its classes more available, said some of the new buildings offer studying advantages. A group of his fellow communications majors often meet in small study rooms in the Interactive Learning Center to work on joint projects.

Boise State's tuition and fees didn't retreat through the recession, as businesses and governments were cutting back expenses. Boise State raised tuition and fees 12 percent between 2007 and 2009, at the height of the recession. Much of it fed the building boom that would make room for research, a key ingredient in the school's quest to become a university of distinction.

In part, Kustra said he was reacting to a gift from Micron that offered $12.5 million toward construction of the new College of Business and Economics, but required the university to put in money as well.

The four-story, $37 million building, completed in 2012, dominates the western entrance to the campus from Capitol Boulevard.

CHAPTER 4: PAYROLL COSTS BALLOON

Another factor driving up costs: In the past decade, Boise State employment has exploded.

During Kustra's tenure, the full-time-equivalent number of employees at Boise State rose 34 percent to 2,221. The Idaho State Controller's Office, which writes paychecks to state government employees, shows the total number of employees at Boise State rose by nearly 1,000 people between August 2004 and August 2013 to a total of 2,995, a 50 percent increase.

Part of the growth is in faculty. The number of graduate programs shot up 78 percent to 82. The number of doctoral programs rose from two to nine.

Boise State is also spending $1.2 million from tuition this year to beef up faculty hires to help meet a state goal that 60 percent of Idahoans between ages 25 and 34 have some post-secondary degree or certificate by 2020. The state is at about 35 percent now.

But most of the growth has come in jobs other than teaching. In the past decade, full-time-equivalent faculty jobs rose 29 percent to 662. Jobs other than faculty increased by 37 percent to 1,560.

Student enrollment, meanwhile, increased by nearly 20 percent to 22,003.

Boise State has 38 employees categorized as executives. They will earn a combined salary of $6 million in 2015, most of it paid with state money and tuition.

The highest-paid of them is Kustra, whose $371,104 salary is about $21,000 more than the norm for similar universities, according to a wage survey Boise State uses for comparison.

Boise State officials say a growing student population, with demands for housing and student advising, has contributed to staff growth.

So have federal mandates that require the university to comply with tax rules and human-resource requirements. For example, Boise State started a two-person compliance office for $225,000 a year to ensure it is meeting regulatory mandates. Staff hired to oversee Boise State's compliance with NCAA regulations is separate.

The Statesman asked Boise State to specify the cost of government regulations. School officials said they could not.

The university also put aside $3 million this year from tuition to help fund a 1 percent pay raise and health insurance premiums for faculty and staff not covered by the state. It is the first raise for employees since 2013.

CHAPTER 5: TAX SUPPORT FADES

At the same time Boise State spent millions to get bigger and better, state support for college students fell. Nationally, support has fallen from an average of $8,579 per full-time-equivalent student in 1988 to $6,105 in 2013, based on 2013 inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. That's a drop of 29 percent.

Net tuition, the amount students pay after state public aid and university tuition discounts, is up to $5,475 per full-time-equivalent student nationwide from $2,685 in 1988, also in 2013 dollars, says the Colorado-based association, which advocates for state policy leadership on higher education. That's a 104 percent increase.

In Idaho, during the same years, the college population more than doubled to 57,837, much of it from growth at Boise State. State support dropped 43 percent to $6,013 and net tuition increased 123 percent to $3,610, according to the college officers association.

"States have not been able to keep up with the rapid increase in enrollment in terms of providing support," said George Pernsteiner, president of the association.

Nationally, legislatures face conflicting priorities. They feel unrelenting pressure to pour more money into public education and Medicaid. When their economies weaken, revenues fall, as they did during the Great Recession.

When financial times got tough, "we have used higher education as a checkbook," said state Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, one of two co-chairmen of the Legislature's budget committee.

Kustra said the Idaho Legislature is gradually but steadily withdrawing its support for higher education. Boise State's appropriation fell from $87.6 million in 2009 to $67.1 million in 2012.

In all, lawmakers trimmed higher ed spending by 26 percent between 2010 and 2012.

"(Idaho is) way up at the top as one of those that's been cut the worst," Kustra said.

State Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, the other legislative budget committee co-chair, defends the Legislature's record. For the past 22 years, the Legislature increased funding to higher education in all but four years -- including the three immediately after the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

But the state was slow to recover from those cuts. It took four years before the Legislature fully restored higher education cuts made in 2003. After cutting in 2010, 2011 and 2012, lawmakers began increasing funding in 2013 but still haven't returned to the 2009 high of $285.2 million.

Idaho taxpayers' overall commitment to higher education, however, has been on a 38-year slide based on the percentage of personal income appropriated from the state general fund for higher education. "We are putting less of our resources into that particular function," said Mike Ferguson, a former chief state economist who until recently directed the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, a nonprofit that researches state tax policy and budget issues. "What we have is a conscious or subconscious decision to essentially shift the burden of funding our public institutions of higher education off the general taxpayer."

Yet until recently, when rising tuition and fees seemed to hit a critical mass, legislatures and higher education weren't under much political pressure to keep tuition and fees low, said Carlson, the senior policy analyst for the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

CHAPTER 6: TO PAY THE BILLS, STUDENTS PILE ON DEBT

Rising tuition and fees at Boise State University received little attention for years. It was a part of doing business. But as rising student debt loads and tuition and fees show no sign of leveling off, some say students are hitting the affordability wall.

Defaults on loan repayments are rising rapidly. Among Boise State alumni who began repaying loans in 2011, 11.4 percent had defaulted within three years, compared with 7.8 percent for borrowers who began repaying in 2009. Default rates also rose at the University of Idaho and Idaho State University.

Cameron says the system is out of control, and it is time for legislators to scrutinize more closely how they pay for higher education.

"We should be looking at ways to lower tuition," Cameron said.

Carpinteyro, the future teacher, says the burden of paying for college worries her.

Jordan Kiler, a Boise resident who graduated from Boise State this year with a degree in exercise science, is feeling the sting. He owes $15,000 on student loans and expects to borrow more so he can go to a school that will help him become a physical therapist.

Boise State led Idaho's three universities in the average student debt among graduating seniors in 2012. Its student debt is equal to 93 percent of the national average for the class of 2012, according to the Institute For College Access and Success, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that works to make college more available and affordable.

At Boise State, 64 percent of 2012 graduates had some form of debt, a figure that has changed little over the past five years. Idaho State University tied with Boise State at 64 percent. At the University of Idaho, it's 66 percent.

Between 2008 and 2012, average student debt rose 30 percent at Boise State, 5 percentage points more than the national average.

The debt loads can limit graduates' possibilities for their futures. Some national indicators suggest students with high debt may postpone buying a home.

A prospective teacher like Carpinteyro may find loan payments harder to make than students who enter higher-paying professions. Beginning teacher salaries in Idaho will be $31,750 in 2014-15, up from $31,000 last school year.

Kiler does not know how much debt he'll owe by the time he's done.

CHAPTER 7: STILL A BARGAIN? AFFORDABILITY IN A POOR STATE

Idaho colleges, including Boise State, boast that their tuition is still a bargain compared with public colleges in other states.

Idaho's four-year schools had the seventh-lowest average tuition among the states in 2013-2014, according to the College Board. Their average undergraduate tuition is in the middle among 15 Western states, according to the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education.

But cost must be compared to affordability. Idaho ranks second from the bottom, ahead of South Dakota, among the 15 Western states in its average income of $38,840 and its median income of $30,326, according to a 2013 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Median income means half the state's workers earn more and half earn less.

Moreover, Idaho's workforce earned the dubious recognition of having the highest percentage of workers in the country -- 7.7 percent -- earning minimum wage in 2012.

Idaho undergraduate students, often earning minimum wage, would have to work 860 hours -- more than 40 percent of a work year -- to pay for the average year of tuition and fees at an Idaho four-year university. Among the 15 western states, Arizona is the highest at 1,269 hours. New Mexico the lowest at 688 hours.

If their parents can help, they would have to work 427 hours, based on the state's median wage, to pay for the average year of tuition and fees at an Idaho four-year university. That's right in the middle of the pack of 15 states. Arizona is the highest at 610 hours. Wyoming is lowest at 247 hours.

Boise State University's tuition growth far outpaced the state's wage growth between 2004 and 2012. Average wages went up 22 percent to $36,912, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which calculates income differently than the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tuition and fees increased 67 percent to $5,884.

"We are not as affordable and low cost as we'd like to think we are," said Brian Greber, a Boise State adjunct economics professor.

Kustra makes no excuses for Boise State's tuition.

CHAPTER 8: YET STUDENTS KEEP COMING -- MORE THAN EVER

Despite rising tuition and fees, students in Idaho and elsewhere still flock to colleges to get a degree -- the pathway, they've been told, to an economically successful life.

A 2014 report in the New York Federal Reserve Bank newsletter said average college graduates earn over $1 million more in salary during their lifetimes than average high school graduates do.

Between 1988 and 2012, the number of students in college rose from about 7.2 million to 11.2 million.

In many ways, Kustra has few signals that tell him to ease off on tuition and fee increases. In June, Boise State applications were up to 7,912, an 11.6 percent increase over 2013. "I think it is the footprints of the parents and the students that are doing the talking here," Kustra said.

CHAPTER 9: THE STATE BOARD

Boise State doesn't impose tuition and fee increases on its students. They must be approved each April by the State Board of Education, which is appointed by the governor. So must virtually every new building and program.

In a typical April meeting, Boise State University and the other schools make their pitches. Often, student leaders add their support. Some board members may grouse about shifting more of the cost of education onto the backs of students. Then they give the schools most of what they seek.

Board members say the universities have made compelling cases for more money. They need to remain competitive with other universities and attract top talent. As Kustra sought the regional research university, proposing new buildings and graduate programs, the board complied.

Kustra was hired to raise the level of Boise State's educational quality, said Rod Lewis, a former general counsel for Micron Technology Inc. who is the State Board of Education's senior member. "My view is that what's happened at BSU is very positive and the growth it has experienced in research and academically (and) structurally has really had the net effect we had hoped for, which is to take BSU to the next level," Lewis said.

But at April's tuition hearing, Lewis and fellow board member Don Soltman were concerned. Soltman, a retired hospital administrator living in Moscow, told the Idaho Statesman weeks before the hearing he had heard anecdotally that tuition was pricing some students out of Idaho schools.

Lewis objected to Boise State University's request for a 6.1 percent tuition increase in 2015, since the state was proposing a more than 6 percent boost in higher education funding statewide at the same time.

Milford Terrell, the owner of DeBest Plumbing & Mechanical in Boise who retired from the board in June, backed Boise State's request. He said the additional tuition and fees were needed to assure the university would get the best professors and provide the best education. Students can afford the tuition increase because they get financial aid, Terrell said.

"Financial aid is alive," Lewis replied. "It comes in the form of debt."

Total financial aid to students skyrocketed between 2003-2004 and 2012-2013, according to Boise State. Aid increased from $77 million to $154.8 million, a jump of 101 percent.

Loans, mostly federal, made up 60 percent of total aid in 2012-13, about the same share as they held 10 years earlier. The number of students receiving aid increased from 12,226 to 14,841, a rise of 17.1 percent, though the percentage of all students receiving aid remained about the same, 65 percent. The percentages do not include private loans made to students or families outside the university's student-loan system, which Boise State says it cannot track.Lewis said a large tuition increase sends a bad message to the Legislature.

Lawmakers are criticized when funding for higher education slips, forcing students to pay more, he said. If schools continue to seek large increases when the state delivers more money, lawmakers will say "you are just going to increase the fees the way you have in the past anyway," Lewis said.

That's just how Cameron took it. "I said, 'You have got to be freaking kidding me," Cameron told the Statesman. "I think it is unrealistic and unreasonable.

"It is frustrating. In the Legislature and in the budget committee, we have education funding as a high priority. We gave higher education as good of an increase as they had in a long time this year. Yet they still went forward and asked for a tuition increase. It seems to be a system with very little checks and balances."

Kustra bristled at Cameron's response.

Kustra said he had not yet decided at the time of that hearing how much more tuition Boise State would request for the 2014-15 school year.

At the April meeting, the State Board of Education did what it usually does, giving Boise State and the other schools most or all of their requested amounts.

The board trimmed Boise State's request to 5.5 percent, pushing tuition and fees up $348 a year to $6,640. Lewis and Soltman voted against the lower amount as well.

CHAPTER 10: THE FUTURE OF TUITION

Other states have sought to break the cycle of spiraling tuition. Montana lawmakers and higher education institutions struck a deal to freeze tuition for two years while the Legislature and governor raise higher-ed funding to cover inflation and increase faculty salaries. The ballpark cost for the 2013-15 agreement: About $50 million.

Kustra said Boise State is looking into raising tuition only every two years, instead of annually, to help families better plan college costs.

But how does that help Kennia Carpinteyro, the education major who is $19,000 in debt and likely to take on more? What would she say to Kustra?

Kustra's response: Tell that to the Legislature.

Bill Roberts: 377-6408, Twitter: @IDS_BillRoberts

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