Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004 | 11:28 a.m.
Nevada's universities and colleges may have to freeze hiring or eliminate some discretionary spending to reimburse students who paid out-of-state tuition this school year even though they had lived in the state for six months.
University System Chancellor Jane Nichols said Wednesday that may be the bottom line as 9,300 out-of-state students are sent letters this week informing them they may be entitled to a refund.
"For this year, institutions will have to refund this money out of their budget," Nichols said. "We don't yet know how much that is so we don't know what impact that will have on the institutions."
The Board of Regents, which oversees the University and Community College System of Nevada, last month voted to reduce the amount of time required for in-state tuition from one year to six months to bring it in line with state law.
They also voted to reimburse any tuition overpaid by students this school year. The regents put off a decision on whether to repay students retroactively to 1995, when the regents changed the policy to lengthen the residency requirement, making it inconsistent with the law.
University officials said refunds will be offered to qualified out-of-state students who began their educations this year but not those who had non-resident status before this year.
Regents apparently did not know the one-year policy violated state law until Community College of Southern Nevada student Sara Renteria recently brought the issue to Regent Steve Sisolak's attention.
This week system attorney Brooke Nielsen discovered another discrepancy in the board's residency policy. Under state law dependents of Nevada residents are entitled to immediate in-state tuition without a waiting period.
This means that if a students' parents move to Las Vegas in July for a job or they register to vote, their child will receive in-state tuition when they start classes at a Nevada institution that August, Sisolak said.
Previously board policy had required the parents to have lived in Nevada for one year, Nichols said. She said she has advised all campuses to fully comply with the state law and reimburse students who are dependents of Nevada residents or who have resided in the state for six months prior to the first day of classes.
In-state students pay considerably less at the state-supported schools than out-of-state students, who pay the full cost of their education.
Nonresident, full-time undergraduate students at UNLV pay $4,244 more per semester than in-state students. Community college out-of-state students pay $2,354 more and at the Nevada State College non-residents pay $1,149 more.
University of Nevada, Las Vegas officials estimate that only 17 of the 883 out-of-state undergraduates who entered this year will be entitled to refunds, at a cost of about $297,793, Nancy Flagg, deputy to the chancellor, said.
About 300 students are entitled to reimbursements at the Community College of Southern Nevada, Arlie Stops, associate vice president for admissions and records. Many of these students are not full-time students, Stops said, so officials estimate the cost at about $100,000.
Nevada State College is only sending out 44 letters to students, and officials there estimate that few will qualify for reimbursement, spokeswoman Kim Howey said. The total cost to the college would only be a couple of thousand dollars.
The amount of money each institution must repay could easily range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars if extended to other non-residents students who qualify for in-state tuition under the six-month rule but entered before fall 2003.
For instance, if only 10 percent of the 3,776 nonresident students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, can prove they or their families were residents for six months before they began classes, the university would have to refund nearly $1.6 million for fall 2003 alone. This amount assumes students were taking six or more units and were charged the full $4,244 more than in-state students.
Using the same math at the Community College of Southern Nevada, if only 10 percent of the 2,274 nonresidents students there can prove they were residents and paid the $2,354 out-of-state tuition, the college would have to refund more than $500,000, again for one semester.
System officials have estimated that it would cost $4.6 million to offer refunds to approximately 6,000 students affected by the policy since it was implemented in 1995. Sisolak said the estimate is a "shot in the dark" and that it could be low.
To cover the costs for this last year, campuses may have to use money that would have went to operating costs or supplies, including the purchase of things like library books, to cover the refunds, Nichols said.
Another option system officials are looking at is using some of the interest the system earns off of its operating pool, an idea generated by Sisolak.
"It's important to me not to affect any funding for programs or to have any tuition increases because of this," Sisolak said. "I don't want current or future students to pay for regent mistakes."
Campuses already depend on some pay-off from the interest the system collects to pay for programs, Nichols said, so if the interest is used to pay for reimbursements it will be taking away from some other need.
"Either way you look at it campuses will have to sacrifice something to take care of this," Nichols said. "But we will take care of this."
System officials have estimated that some 600 students may be entitled to reimbursements for this year, but most campuses are sending out letters to all nonresident students.
Students will have to fill out an application and show documentation they qualified for in-state tuition to receive reimbursement. The change does not apply to students already receiving tuition discounts for being from a neighboring state or children of alumni.
Students who think they may qualify for a change in their residency status may review a frequently asked question document and download an application at nevada.edu/residency/
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