ARDMORE — As University of Oklahoma President Joe Harroz asked the OU Board of Regents to raise tuition for the fifth year in a row, he repeatedly and preemptively pushed back on “headlines” he feared would be written.
“As we ask for these tuition increases that are here, the question is why, and the answer is we want excellence and affordability, and we’re going to pay attention to the individuals who otherwise could not afford to go,” Harroz said June 12, gesturing to slides bearing statistics about financial aid increases. “If you do those things right, you’re not just trying to publish a headline or engage in political expedience, but you’re actually driving a strategic plan forward to accomplish those goals for everyone.”
One of those goals involves 3 percent merit-based pay increases for OU professors and administrators. With a price tag of about $15 million on the Norman campus alone, the raises cost roughly twice the $8.1 million that will be generated for Fiscal Year 2026 by the 3 percent tuition and fee increase approved unanimously by regents last week. Harroz, who received a salary increase from $500,000 to $575,000 as well as a $200,000 performance bonus, told regents and observers that raising tuition is among the “most unpleasant” tasks of leading a university.
“When you look at the funding of a research university, that is far and away the biggest component to how you operate. What are we tied to? We’re tied to excellence and affordability. There’s a ban in our organization from just referring to one,” Harroz said. “When you are proposing to raise tuition — and I’ve told the state regents, and we’ve had this conversation a lot — there will likely be a proposal, unless there’s an extraordinary amount that comes from the state itself, every year. Because you can’t be just affordable. People don’t buy free. (…) You’ve got to be excellent and affordable.”
On the same day Harroz proclaimed tuition increases are required to achieve “excellence” in higher education, the Board of Regents for the Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges held a Finance Committee meeting where leaders of Oklahoma State University explained why OSU’s tuition and fees were staying flat for the fourth year in a row — the sixth in the last seven.
Chris Kuwitzky, OSU’s new chief financial officer, said “the primary reason that [OSU has] been able to avoid tuition and fee increases is because [of] enrollment growth” that creates “natural revenue increases.”
“There’s just a real commitment to student affordability,” Kuwitzky said after the June 12 meeting. “I think that’s the bottom line. The same pressures we feel in our budgets, you feel in your house, they feel in their homes. And so, the more we can do to keep our cost manageable, or more manageable, the more realistic it is for a student financially to come and be successful without having to incur a bunch of loans to make that happen.”
When all regents formally voted the next day to hold OSU’s tuition flat, new OSU President Jim Hess said maintaining affordability is his No. 1 priority.
“While tuition increases would be nice for the revenue picture, it’s not helpful to students and/or their parents,” Hess said June 13. “So our challenge, our obligation, is to keep the tuition at the lowest possible level, which requires us to work on the expense side of the equation. How do you keep expenses lower so that, when you have mandatory costs going up, how do you balance that? So our efforts, particularly this next 12 months, are going to be about efficiencies.”
Informed that OSU would be keeping tuition flat for a fourth straight year, an OU graduate in Carter County feigned incredulousness.
“You can do that?” the OU graduate asked. “What kind of sorcery is this?”
The OU and OSU/A&M boards of regents govern more universities than just the state’s two flagships. While the pressures and demands of smaller institutions are inherently different, some are seeking tuition and fee increases for FY 26 while others are not.
Under the OU Board of Regents umbrella, neither Rogers State University nor Cameron University is trying to increase tuition and fees for the upcoming academic year. Instead, each regional university is attempting to draw more enrollment to their respective campuses — a constant challenge.
OSU/A&M regents also voted to keep Panhandle State University tuition flat. But student costs are rising at Langston University (3 percent tuition increase), Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College (2.9 percent tuition increase) and Connors State College (a $1 per credit hour tuition increase with $3 per credit hour in fees switching to tuition).
All tuition and fee increase proposals now head to the State Regents for Higher Education for final approval. Chancellor Sean Burrage, who leads the state system as a whole, attended the OU Board of Regents’ meeting June 13, one day after delivering a eulogy in Antlers for his uncle — former State Auditor & Inspector Steve Burrage — who died following a tragic boating accident.
Asked his reaction to OU increasing tuition to pursue “excellence” while OSU holds tuition flat for “affordability,” Burrage noted that OU and OSU’s combined enrollment makes up only about one-third of the entire Oklahoma higher education system.
“Historically, the tuition, fees and the cost of attendance have been about the same. The last few years, OU has gone up with tuition, I think about 3 percent per year. And I know that’s part of the strategic plan that’s been approved by the OU regents and has been executed by President Harroz and his team. In fact, I worked at OU whenever the plan was first developed, and the strategic plan budget was devised to execute or implement that plan,” Burrage said. “At OSU, the last couple years at least, I know for certain they’ve not asked for tuition and fee increases, and that’s a different plan. I know they also are interested in growth, and maybe they just have some some different tactics. But I support both the universities, and I know they’ve both said they would like to try to get to 40,000 (students), and I want to help them get there.”
But with OU and OSU pursuing “different tactics” in terms of tuition, the dynamic begs questions about the universities’ individual financial underpinnings.
Asked if he and others within OSU’s leadership look to OU regarding tuition raises and cost comparisons, Hess said simply, “We don’t.”
“Their institutional needs are really their business,” Hess said of OU. “I’m more keenly focused on Oklahoma State University students and what their needs are.”
Harroz offered a slightly longer assessment when asked about OSU’s ability to keep tuition flat compared to OU’s strategy of raising its sticker price while simultaneously trying to increase financial aid.
“The key thing to look at is not what is your sticker price, but what do you actually charge? And then, what are the things that you’re wanting to accomplish, and are those adequately funded?” Harroz said after the June 12 meeting. “So I didn’t write the OSU strategic plan. I don’t know the specifics of their strategic plan, but for ours and where we want to go, when I look at how we do it — raising the sticker price as we’ve talked about and then making sure we meet the needs of the students — it’s that net price that actually matters.”
Harroz said “it’s what you pay, not what you’re charged,” and he argued “there is without a doubt also a recruitment benefit” as well as “a funding benefit” to raising tuition.
“When you look at the way pricing happens in higher education — for the same student, if I go to you and say, ‘Your cost is X,’ and then I go to another student and say, ‘Sticker price is 2X, we’re going to give you a scholarship and get you to X,’ it’s that second one where students come more often,” Harroz said. “So there’s two elements. There’s the reality of how higher ed is priced, and then there’s the truth and the data around what students pay in reality, not just the sticker price.”
Of course, both OU and OSU are facing a pair of new financial pressures drawing discussion on campuses from coast to coast. The recently approved House v. NCAA settlement establishes a new line-item cost for athletic departments, which will now be able to make up to $20.5 million of direct payments to student athletes each year, with an annual 4 percent increase in the cap over the next decade.
Separately, President Donald Trump’s administration announced in February that National Institutes of Health research grants would cap coverage of “indirect costs” at 15 percent, a potentially massive shift for research universities that have often used NIH funding to cover more than 50 percent of those indirect costs.
“That’s a huge question, so we continue to monitor it literally every day,” Harroz said. “But I don’t have any answers to that. We’re already impacted by several million dollars. It’s NIH-focused right now, so at risk is probably $20-ish-million in that space. If it broadens out to [the National Science Foundation], then it’s a bigger impact to the Norman campus. (…) So another $20 to $25 million (potentially) on that side.”
Despite the uncertainty about federal research funding, Harroz said OU leaders have decided it is “better to continue to lean into it” owing to the critical role university research plays and “how we engage with innovation.”
“We’re going to come to a solution, I believe, that allows us to continue to be the laboratories of basic sciences that industry [needs],” Harroz said. “Because if we don’t do that work, you’re going to be asking private industry to do that work. It’s not in their wheelhouse, and they’re going to charge a lot more than we do. So I think we’re going to find a number that actually works.”
At OSU, however, efforts to turn university research into private sector “innovation” created a financial black hole and spurred a presidential transition in February. With Kuwitzky working to sweep the shuttered Innovation Foundation’s accounts back under OSU’s broader and more traditional budgeting practices, he said the decision to keep tuition flat indicates a commitment toward other efficiencies.
“We’re actively looking at opportunities to consolidate, and the purpose of that is not to diminish services we provide on campus, but to do them more efficiently and more effectively,” Kuwitzky said. “I think just being sensitive to making sure that you’re delivering your administrative costs as efficiently as you can, and keeping those costs as low (as possible), it helps you redirect money toward your academic missions, because we’re there to serve the students, not to grow an administration. So I think the more caution and care that we can bring to that, the better off we’ll be.”
That could be music to the ears of Gov. Kevin Stitt, who said before last week’s tuition votes that he suspected more efficiencies could be found at both OU and OSU.
To that end, OSU/A&M regent regent Rick Walker, who was named chairman of the board Friday, said he is proud of how OSU strives for affordability and accessibility. However, Walker said he “can’t speak for future year” tuition decisions as campus costs continue to increase.
“We’ve been able to do it up to this point,” Walker said Thursday. “But I certainly can’t look forward into the future and say we’re going to be able to continue to [keep tuition flat]. I do think that it’s imminent, at some point, that we’ll have to increase tuition at some rate.”
Before the OU Board of Regents voted to approve the 3 percent tuition increase Thursday, most regents offered remarks about the decision. Regent Kenneth Waits said many people assume universities are “bureaucratic and bloated,” but he said that is not the case at OU.
“It’s something that is incredibly important to all of us. All of us want affordability,” Waits said. “I don’t think anyone desires coming in here with a tuition increase recommendation.”
But with Harroz and OU’s regents continuing manage metrics in pursuit of an invitation to join the American Association of Universities, moving the needle on faculty indicators and postdoctoral appointments is hard to do without additional dollars.
“If you look at the average cost for the average (OU) student in state, it’s gone down by 27 percent,” Harroz said. “If you look for the average out-of-state (OU) student, it’s up over that time period by 1 or 2 percent. I think the real question is, ‘Can you make sure you provide the highest value and that every student who has the talent and has the ability but doesn’t have the money can afford to go?’”
Asked how current and prospective OU students can best take advantage of the financial aid Harroz repeatedly referenced, university communications officials said to contact the Student Financial Center at (405) 325-7608 or sfc@ou.edu.
If OU eventually achieves its AAU dreams, it would become only the sixth Southeastern Conference school to join those ranks. Of the 69 members, only the University of Florida, the University of Texas, the University of Missouri, Texas A&M University and Vanderbilt University hail from the SEC.
To that end, OU is expected to net significant new athletic department dollars from SEC revenue sharing next football season — a primary reason that OU regents voted to ditch the Big 12 for college athletics’ big show in 2021. Both Harroz and Athletic Director Joe Castiglione said last week that they believe OU can continue to self-finance its Athletics Department without state aid or student tuition having to back-fill sports programs. Nonetheless, the new $20.5 million expense for direct payments — which Castiglione said will only involve the football, men’s and women’s basketball, softball, baseball and women’s gymnastics programs — adds another pecuniary pressure for a university that has historically seen the Athletics Department contribute to educational coffers.
Speaking Friday to the OU Board of Regents, Burrage offered an update on his and OU’s biggest ask of the Oklahoma Legislature this session: creation of a new “research university” designation that would carry annual $75 million appropriation line items for OU and OSU. While higher education institutions received $12.5 million to help with rising property insurance costs — as well as another round of deferred maintenance funding for campuses and a new $2 million scholarship program aimed at keeping students with ACT scores between 33 and 36 at in-state universities — the new “research university” designation did not receive approval.
“We were in the game until the end, and we were because of the efforts of President Harroz,” Burrage said, praising his longtime friend. “I like to joke about him, but he is the man. He was at the Capitol making that play.”
Atop the priorities in OU’s pursuit for AAU admission is increased research funding from the state of Oklahoma. Harroz has emphasized that states like Texas and Florida provide significantly more per-pupil funding for higher education than Oklahoma, even after recent increases from the Oklahoma Legislature.
“I really think they made a lot of headway that we will see the benefits of next year,” Burrage said. “After the budget was announced, I received a call from Speaker (Kyle) Hilbert because he knew I would be disappointed because we were so close. And he gave me his pledge that he would work with us in higher ed and the regents and the universities to try to make the case for sustained recurring dollars next session. And believe me, I wrote that down when he said it.”
However, OU and OSU did receive significant one-time funding for key capital projects. At OSU, a $250 million appropriation will overhaul the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine. At OU, a $200 million appropriation means the university only needs $50 million more to build a new pediatric heart hospital. Legislative leaders and OU officials have a pending request for that chunk of change from the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust, although lawmakers expressed frustration this session with TSET’s initial responses to the request.
Tres Savage (William W. Savage III) has served as editor in chief of NonDoc since the publication launched in 2015. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma and worked in health care for six years before returning to the media industry. He is a nationally certified Mental Health First Aid instructor and serves on the board of the Oklahoma Media Center.
Sasha Ndisabiye grew up splitting her time between southern California and southern Arizona before moving to Oklahoma to attend Langston University. After graduating from Langston with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in sociology, she completed a NonDoc editorial internship in the summer of 2024. She became NonDoc’s education reporter in October 2024.
Tres Savage (William W. Savage III) has served as editor in chief of NonDoc since the publication launched in 2015. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma and worked in health care for six years before returning to the media industry. He is a nationally certified Mental Health First Aid instructor and serves on the board of the Oklahoma Media Center.
Sasha Ndisabiye grew up splitting her time between southern California and southern Arizona before moving to Oklahoma to attend Langston University. After graduating from Langston with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in sociology, she completed a NonDoc editorial internship in the summer of 2024. She became NonDoc’s education reporter in October 2024.
