University of New Mexico regents weigh tuition increases and administrative cuts as they grapple with shrunken funding in the state budget. Students protested tuition hikes at Monday's regents meeting on campus, standing in the back of the room holding picket signs that urged regents to cut administrative and athletic spending instead. Many students fear an increase that could go as high as 10 percent. Regents have said they would cut everything possible before considering a tuition increase, and then work to make it as small as possible. Students say the impact on UNM's record-breaking recession-triggered enrollment would be severe. "Devastating," said graduate student Liza Minno Bloom. "New Mexico is a low-middle income state. It threatens the publicness--the very publicness of this university--such a wildly disproportionate tuition increase is way out of flex with inflation." "For over a decade we've seen tuition increase consecutively for every single academic year," said Megan McRobert, another graduate student. "It's really concerning to us, especially now that people are telling us it's because of the financial crisis. Well, no - we've seen this as a pattern over years and years."
