Tuition and student fees will not be raised ahead of the next school year at nearly all public colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia.
The Georgia Board of Regents voted Tuesday to retain current rates for tuition and student fees for all but one of the 26 institutions that comprise the University System of Georgia, which the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported this week marked the fourth time in the last five years that such a decision was made.
The report cited the economic impact of the ongoing pandemic as the primary reason behind this year's vote.
The one school excluded from Tuesday's decision was Middle Georgia State University, which is entering the first year of a "three-yar plan to bring undergraduate tuition into alignment with other universities in the same academic sector," said officials in the report.
The AJC says the university's tuition will increase by $64 per credit hour for out-of-state students, and $17 per credit for in-state students.
State lawmakers recently increased funding to the system by nearly 27%, which the report said brought the total to roughly $3.1 billion.
Following the Great Recession, state lawmakers voted to cut the percentage of the system's budget from 67% to around 50%, prompting regents to implement a special institutional fee in 2009 to help cover various expenses.
Now, the AJC says legislators have brought an end to the fee by adding an additional $230 million to the system’s budget.
