Tuition for University of Minnesota students will increase at the highest rate in ten years next school year.
This comes after the Minnesota Board of Regents approved a $5 billion budget.
Minnesota residents who attend the University as an undergraduate will now pay 4.5% more in tuition, bringing the total yearly cost to a little over $15,000.
Regents described it as a "difficult budget year", and noted that tuition increases were "larger than originally planned ".
That's in part because the University's request for $45 million in state funding was denied by the state legislature.
All of this comes with the backdrop of declining enrollment numbers on campuses across the country. Nationwide, undergraduate college enrollment dropped 8% from 2019 to 2022, with declines even after returning to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.
The slide in the college-going rate since 2018 is the steepest on record, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the same time, the nation’s student debt has soared. The issue has loomed large in the minds of young Americans as President Joe Biden pushed to cancel huge swaths of debt.