When Syracuse University co-founded Utica College in 1946 to further address the needs of returning World War II veterans, there was an expectation the institution would eventually be independent.

Now, in 2015, 69 years after its creation and 20 years after its legal separation from SU, Utica College has cut tuition by 42 percent. It’s an unprecedented step in combatting the price tag of college tuition — a step that is reflective of UC’s motto to “never stand still.”

“Every school in America is grappling with the whole idea of how do you remain affordable, and every school has to find their own solution to that, you know, pathway to affordability,” said UC President Todd Hutton.

The tuition reset will affect full-time students in UC’s on-campus undergraduate program, and will go into effect at the start of the 2016-17 academic year, according to a UC release. Tuition will drop to $19,996, and the total cost — which includes the fee for room and board — will be reduced to $30,430, according to the release.

The authority to make such a big decision on tuition is vested in UC’s Board of Trustees, which was established after the school legally separated from SU in 1995.

UC’s newfound independence required the creation of the board, which would select a president of UC. Previously, when UC was what Hutton calls a “branch campus” of SU, the president of the college had to be appointed by the chancellor of SU. When UC and SU were legally intertwined, Hutton said the lack of a Board of Trustees meant a lack of a group of community supporters and alumni supporters to help guide the institution into the future. He said that input is one of the biggest benefits of being an independent institution.

Hutton said there are other luxuries UC was not afforded while it was tied to SU, such as the ability to launch major comprehensive campaigns that are worth millions of dollars. UC did not have the ability to develop resources for those campaigns to reinvest in the college when it was a branch campus of SU, Hutton said.

Since its legal separation from SU, UC has also branded itself academically and athletically, Hutton said, with the addition of 23 graduate programs and Division II sports to its repertoire.

“There was always an intention from the very, very beginning for Syracuse to support the creation of a new four-year institution, and then to allow that institution to become independent,” Hutton said. “I think it may have taken longer than they envisioned back in 1946, but back in the ’70s we were accredited separately from Syracuse. So the separation and independence really started in the ’70s.”

UC’s accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education was one of the small “baby steps” Hutton said UC took toward independence during the 1970s that culminated with its formal independence from SU in 1995.

The idea that SU and UC would eventually separate was also inevitable to former SU Chancellor Kenneth “Buzz” Shaw, who headed the university when UC became an independently chartered school in 1995.

It would not be in the mission of SU to establish and maintain a network of branch campuses, Shaw said, because that’s what public state universities do, and SU had no desire to be a system of campuses that related back to it, whether they were housed at Syracuse or elsewhere, he added.

“Syracuse’s niche — if it was going to continue to be successful — had to be as a very high-end, private university,” Shaw said.

When Shaw became chancellor in 1991, he saw in former UC President Michael Simpson and Hutton a desire for independence of the school, which Shaw said already effectively operated at arm’s length from SU at the time.

He added that UC also wanted to continue to have some kind of affiliation with SU. Although the school became independent for all legal purposes in 1995, there are still a handful of UC students who will receive SU degrees in May 2016, Hutton said. A 2008 agreement called for the academic separation between the two schools by May 2016, and said any student who arrived to UC before or during the 2010 fall semester would receive an SU degree.

“If a student in May of ‘16 has not yet completed — and I certainly hope they have after six years — but if they haven’t completed their degree then they would then earn a UC degree once they completed their degree requirement,” Hutton said.

The academic separation in 2008 was the last formal and definitive step UC took toward independence, Hutton said.

Although SU owned the intellectual property of the college, UC’s campus and facilities were owned by its foundation, Hutton said, and the board of the foundation’s sole responsibility was to oversee the school’s funds. UC was never really funded by SU, Hutton said, because students’ tuition supported its programs and facilities.

Tuition will continue to support UC, but, as expected, the college will lose net revenue per student due to the tuition reset. However, the college expects this loss will be offset by higher enrollment, according to a UC document about the reset.

In the 2015-16 academic year, UC has experienced a growth of more than 30 percent, and for the past 15 consecutive years Hutton said there has been record enrollment at the institution. This kind of sustainable success, and UC’s ability to cut tuition without cutting faculty, staff or programs is how Hutton and a task force at UC knew a tuition reset would be feasible for the school.

“On behalf of our students — we kept seeing other places, tuition kept climbing and climbing and climbing and it was getting out of the reach of our students and our families,” Hutton said. “The attrition — the number one reason for attrition was financial, and we knew that we had to do something.”

Published on October 6, 2015 at 10:31 pm

Contact Alexa: atorrens@syr.edu