Truth and Tuition, a meeting between admin and student senate to discuss changes in tuition, was held Feb. 23. Weber State University Student Association Student Body President Mia Foster, urged senators to remember they are representing their colleges, and to vote accordingly. The meeting was held shortly after the senate meeting and involved a presentation by interim director Leslie Durham, Ph.D.
Truth and Tuition was first passed in 2002 with an amendment from the Utah Code 53H-8-203 that states state laws require institutions considering an increase in tuition rates for undergraduate students to hold a meeting to receive public input and response on the issue.
The meetings are required by the state Legislature to hold public meetings when tuition increases for undergraduate students. It provides an explanation of why the proposal is increased and how the revenue is increased by as well as what the increase will be used for with an opportunity for public comments from students, as told by the Utah System of Higher Education policy.
During the meeting Weber State University was listed as the fifth cheapest institution compared to other Utah institutions at $6,625 for two semesters full time. The Utah tuition rate had changed since then from going to 6% in 2011-12 to now 2.5% in 2025-26. In the proposed 2026-27 tuition and fee, the increase ranges from 2.5%-3.5% with associate degrees going from $0-$101 (0%-3.5%) and upper division $74-$103.32 (2.5%-3.5%).
The institution was able to hold associate degree tuition flat as they have been trying to find a way to create a differential in the tuition from the sub 60 credits to the upper division.
A big chunk of the money is going to cost living adjustment. The legislature set the numbers to what they think is appropriate for their employees to receive, and will be funding 75% of it. Which leaves 25% of it to be funded by the institution. The meeting continued going though with the request the institution was asking for. With the Weber State performance funding request being $1,370,000 with 34.8% going towards mandated costs of utilities, risk insurance and software.
There are further plans to continue keeping tuition as minimum as possible, for not only students, but for the community and faculty as well.
“So many different kinds of people take advantage of what we offer at Weber, including our own employees … But I think in terms of affordability, we’ve been strategic in what we’ve asked from the legislature, continuing to look at sub 120 degrees, making our advising top flight so that students are taking what they truly need to take and know what their path should look like,” Durham said. With the Amplify Weber Campaign more than $125 million has been raised towards their goal of $200 million, which will help fund more scholarships.
A cost of $250,000 for eliminating Developmental Math Course fees that was inducted during the meeting, with plans for it to go away and help take an extra cost off for students. “We removed almost all the course fees last year during the HB265 process, but one course fee still remained,” Durham said. “So that affects lots of students at Weber State, and we would like to correct that. We would like to make it so that students in developmental math aren’t charged an extra fee for those courses. We want students to succeed.”
A senate committee was formed to discuss student fees for the upcoming semester, one committee member, Mia Latu, said she was very satisfied with the outcome. Latu said that while the initial proposal was for $50,000 one time and $100,000 ongoing, Dean of Students Ali Threet was able to secure an additional $50,000.
The Student Fee Recommendation Committee had a list of different requests that the University had asked upon with the use of student fees and were able to allocate the award to every group that requested. ”When a department comes to request for funding, our main question is, how many students are you going to serve? So that was a constant thought at the back of our mind,” said Sakenna Yosimbom, a student on the Recommendation Committee.
