Universities of Wisconsin leaders are proposing a 2% tuition hike for in-state undergraduate students.

The call prompted a sharp rebuke from a GOP senator, who accused top UW regents of lying to lawmakers during an April hearing when they denied such an increase was already locked in.

Combined with segregated fees and room and board, the majority of undergraduates could see cost increases of around 2.5%, according to the university system. Across all programs, tuition and segregated fees would increase by an average of 2.2%.

Universities of Wisconsin interim President Renée Wachter in a statement called the proposed tuition hike a “measured increase.”

The Board of Regents will vote on the proposal Thursday.

“We recognize Wisconsin families are managing rising costs in every part of their lives, and that reality informed this proposal,” Wachter said. 

The 2% increase equates to another $210 per year for in-state students at UW-Madison, $184 at UW-Milwaukee and between $147 and $175 at other UW schools. 

Out-of-state and graduate students will see variable increases in tuition, depending on their school. 

Tuition revenue is set to grow by $146 million in 2026-27, a 7.4% increase from last year. The university system’s budget is expected to grow 12.3% to $7.9 billion next year, per a proposed budget that will also be voted on Thursday. 

The vote comes on the heels of the 5% tuition increase enacted across the UW system last year. If approved, this would be the fourth consecutive year that regents have voted to raise tuition. Prior to that, in-state tuition had been frozen for a decade.

Board documents cite salary and fringe benefit increases, as well as inflationary pressures, as driving the tuition increase, saying the $256 million state funding increase approved last year did not fully address these expenses. 

Board President Amy Bogost told lawmakers in April that tuition increases were not “written in stone.”

That remark earned a rebuke from fired UW President Jay Rothman, who told lawmakers in an email obtained by WisPolitics that administrators had been working on a 2% tuition increase for months before Bogost’s April 9 testimony. 

Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Testin today slammed the proposed increase and board leadership in a statement this afternoon, saying Bogost and Regent Timothy Nixon “straight up lied to our faces” in their April testimony to the Senate Committee on Universities and Technical Colleges.

“At least we now know that we can no longer take the UW Board of Regents at their word. My Joint Finance Committee colleagues and I certainly will not forget this betrayal when the regents and UW officials come begging to us for more money during next year’s state budget deliberations,” the Stevens Point Republican said. 

Nixon told WisPolitics he had not seen Testin’s statement but said Bogost had not made any commitments about tuition increases to the Senate committee.

“The senator is entitled to any opinion on anything that he wants, but I don’t remember (Bogost) promising anything,” Nixon said. 

He also said he had only learned that Rothman and administrators were working on a tuition increase in the days leading up to the Senate hearing. 

Nixon noted that the regents had not yet cast their vote on the tuition increase, though he expected it to pass.