The Board of Visitors deferred formally setting next year's tuition, as they usually do, at their spring meeting which ended Saturday.
Tuition for the 2005-2006 academic year will be set at a special Board teleconference in the next two weeks. The administration said it hopes support from the General Assembly and a recalculation will slightly blunt any tuition increase. After next year, tuition increases will be fixed for six years under a proposed Management Agreement with the Commonwealth.
The Board has been grappling with tight budgets for graduate student aid for years, and the issue came up again in the discussion of tuition. Some members expressed concern that the University's aid packages, particularly in social sciences and the humanities, were not as competitive as what peer institutions are offering.
Graduate aid is "woefully short," University Provost Gene Block said.
"Not only do graduate students expect not to pay tuition, they expect to receive a stipend for living expenses, and if you don't do that you lose students to other schools," Block said.
One goal of the Capital Campaign is the establishment of a $200 million endowment that would fully fund graduate student aid, according to Block.
As the search for a new basketball coach begins, the BOV was briefed on NCAA regulations that severely restrict the role Board members can play in athletics, particularly in the recruitment of coaches and prospective athletes.
"These rules are not intuitive and it's traps for the unaware that we have to be careful of," board Rector Gordon F. Rainey said.
The Board also signaled its strong support for the evolving Higher Education Restructuring Bill making its way through Richmond.
"It looks like we're going to get this done," Rainey said. "I think this is a splendid example of providing Virginia leadership, and it all started right here."
Rainey also took advantage of the meeting to praise the student leadership provided by departing student Baord member James Head.
"On the time I've been on this Board, we've had a series of good student members, but none has been more effective then Jamie," Rainey said.
He added that the Baord looked to Head on issues that went far beyond student affairs and told his successor, Catherine Neale, she had big shoes to fill.
"This has been one of the most important and neatest experiences of my entire life," Head said.
In other business, the Baord discussed the 1,800-student-strong University chapter at Wise in Southwestern Virginia, which is going through a period of exponential growth and construction, College at Wise Chancellor Ernest H. Ern said.
"It's a wonderful time to be at Wise," Ern said. "I couldn't be more positive about the future of that place."
To augment the construction of a new drama facility and to highlight the tie between the Wise campus and main Grounds, the school is on the market for a large outdoor bust of Thomas Jefferson. Yet, even for Mr. Jefferson, the Board balked at the $600,000 price tag of one prospective statue and resolved to continue to explore other options.
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