I appreciate the board’s approval of ASU’s 2018-19 tuition proposal, which includes no tuition increase for any Arizona resident undergraduate students – current and incoming. Arizona resident undergraduate students will also see no class or academic program fee increases.

This freeze in tuition and class and academic program fees underscores our commitment to providing Arizona students unprecedented access to one of the highest-quality public university educations in the country at the lowest possible price.

We are now in the seventh year of our commitment to resident students that we will not raise tuition more than three percent annually. This promise makes our pricing model very predictable for students and families.

We have worked tirelessly to be in an organizational and financial position that allows us to not raise tuition, class or academic program fees this year for Arizona students. And we will continue to advance a model that ensures resident students have limited financial barriers to attend ASU and access to the maximum amount financial aid is available.

I am still concerned, however, that Arizona has no state funding model for universities when we know that access to higher education can provide exponentially improved opportunities for our citizens and our economy.

We are in the second year of encouraging our legislators to invest in Arizona’s students and families. We are asking the state to fund half of the cost of an Arizona resident to attend the university, or about $7,500 per student. We’ll take care of the rest.

ASU is proud to be the university of choice for Arizona students, and we are committed to continuing our ambitious trajectory of becoming a comprehensive knowledge enterprise dedicated to the simultaneous pursuit of excellence, broad access to quality education, and maximum societal impact.