Republican lawmakers want to prohibit the University of Wisconsin System from increasing in-state undergraduate tuition by more than the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures changes in inflation over time.
After a decade of tuition freezes imposed by the Legislature, the UW System has voted to increase tuition three years in a row, increasing in-state tuition by $2,000 since 2023.
The UW System opposes the bill, saying the Board of Regents keeps affordability "front and center” when looking at costs for students.
“While we generally align with CPI and the cost of inflation, I think preserving the board's ability to make those decisions, to look at [inflation costs] over the long term, to factor in all of those costs [housing, dining, etc.] is essential in balancing affordability and academic excellence,” Julie Gordon, interim finance and administration vice president said at the hearing.
In-state tuition at UW-Madison rose by $562 for the 2025-26 academic year, but the 2024 CPI rate of 2.93% would have only increased it by $356.
A recent National College Attainment Network analysis ranked Wisconsin one of the least affordable states for higher education. The state ranked 46th in the country, with no Wisconsin four-year colleges included in the study considered affordable.
The CPI in 2024 was 2.93%, according to a Wisconsin Department of Administration estimate. An in-state tuition increase of 2.93% would add nearly $28.5 million to the entire UW System and $7 million to UW-Madison specifically.
The bill’s author, Sen. Andre Jacque, R-New Franken, said at the hearing a cap on tuition increases would help families confidently plan for college expenses.
“We must set common-sense guardrails so that any price increase is reasonable, ensuring the UW System remains a cost effective option for Wisconsin families,” Jacque said. “It’s time to prioritize students over bureaucracy.”
The state currently provides 20% of the UW System’s budget, half of what it provided a few decades ago, but Jacque told The Daily Cardinal state funding isn’t the main issue when it comes to the UW System’s affordability.
“The UW System should be able to balance their budget without doing it on the backs of students,” Jacque said.
Tuition currently makes up 60% of the UW System budget.
Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers agreed to a $256 million state budget increase for the UW System in July, the largest funding increase in about 20 years. Evers and the UW Board of Regents initially pushed for $856 million.
A week after Evers signed the budget into law, the Board of Regents approved a 4% tuition hike for the 2025-26 academic year with an optional 1% additional add-on, which every UW campus adopted except for UW-Green Bay.
This was the third consecutive increase in tuition fees after a 10-year tuition freeze that expired in 2023. Since then, in-state tuition has increased by more than $2,000.
Republican legislators last froze in-state tuition in 2013 after a state audit showed the UW System raised tuition by 5.5% six years in a row while holding hundreds of millions of unspent tuition money.
The bill was originally introduced in 2019 by Rep. Dave Murphy, R-Greenville, before the tuition freeze expired. He said he wanted to prevent tuition from skyrocketing following the freeze, as it did when a similar one was lifted in 1968.
