University of Buffalo suggested revised UB 2020: Tuition hike would be 8%

According to the press center of the University of Buffalo, school president Satish K. Tripathi on Tuesday offered a proposal to state leaders, revised 2020 Challenge Grant program. This plan calls to support a $375 million project to relocate UB's medical school to downtown Buffalo.

According to the press release, this program will revitalize Buffalo's economy and will create thousands of new jobs. Under the proposal, the university plans to implement the next phase of the UB 2020 plan for academic excellence and spurring rapid development of Buffalo's emerging biomedical economy.

The UB team that presented the plan in Albany included prominent business leaders among representatives of the shool: Jeremy M. Jacobs, CEO of Delaware North Companies, Robert Brady, CEO of Moog, Inc., a manufacturer of components and systems for aircraft, space, industrial and medical applications and others.

They were very optimistic about the presented program, as it will help to create more than 3 000 new full-time jobs in Western New York by 2018. The medical school project is supposed to serve as a catalyst for additional development with Kaleida Health, Buffalo's largest hospital system and other private and public entities.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said that UB's expansion would create new jobs and open up new opportunities that can revitalize neighborhoods and improve quality of life throughout Buffalo's urban core.

Other items in UB's proposal are a 8% tuition hike on UB undergraduate and graduate students. UB is asking the state legislature to approve a $200 per semester tuition increase. UB states that its tuition is one of the lowest among the 60 U.S. research universities that make up the Association of American Universities. Even with the proposed tuition increase, UB would remain one of the most affordable major public universities in the U.S.

Democratic leaders in the Assembly consider the tuition hike to be too high, and this program cannot be implemeted as UB tuition levels differ for other state university campuses.