STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) — UW Stevens Point students turned out in big numbers to vote in differential tuition for their campus, but the process isn’t quite over yet.
Katie Cronmiller is the UWSP Student Government Association President. Cronmiller says 62 percent of the 3,309 votes, or nearly 2,050 students support paying about $200 dollars more each semester. The additional fee would be used exclusively for adding academic advisers and instructors in high-demand required courses, and prevent students from returning for a fifth year to complete their degrees.
Cronmiller says they must now get ready to present their differential tuition plan to the Board of Regents. “Our next step is going to be going to the Board of Regents meeting in December to propose our differential tuition plan to them for final approval, and if they approve it in December, we will take next semester on campus to kind of get everything set up, get everything in place, and then it would start, really, in fall of 2016.”
Chancellor Bernie Patterson says this battle to bring differential tuition to one of only two UW campuses that doesn’t have it yet has taken years to accomplish, and is an accomplishment for students and staff. “The other piece of this that other people aren’t always thinking about is it’s a great example of how shared governance can work, and should work in this state, and it certainly is working on this campus, and this is just another great example of that.”
Cronmiller says the online balloting last Wednesday and Thursday brought out a lot of interested students. “We had a 48-hour, two day electronic referendum vote, where every student was emailed the ballot. They were able to just click on it, vote, and in the end we had over 3,000 students vote, which was just a huge turnout for our student population.”
The student voter turnout last week was more than double any previous student election turnout. Thirty-six percent of the university’s eligible 9,215 students voted in the referendum.
The process to bring differential tuition to Stevens Point began before most every present student arrived at the campus.
Ten other UW universities have differential tuition, most at higher levels. UW-La Crosse students pay $643, and UW-Eau Claire students pay $531 each semester.
(Listen to our interviews with Chancellor Bernie Patterson and Student Government President Katie Cronmiller on our website by clicking the links on their names.)
