MANHATTAN -K-State president Kirk Schulz released a statement on Friday about the proposed tuition freeze in Kansas discussed during a joint House and Senate committee meeting.

“We have pledged to keep the K-State family updated throughout the development of the higher education budget during the 2015 legislative session. In the early part of the session, the Kansas Senate proposal for higher education had a proposed cut for K-State for the next two years, while the Kansas House proposal had a flat budget with no cuts,”

Schulz said in the release. “During a recent joint House and Senate committee meeting to work through the differences in higher education funding between the two chambers, a proposal was presented that would prevent budget cuts to K-State but would impose a tuition freeze for the next two years. It has been widely reported in the media that we agreed with such a proposal. Please be assured that we have not endorsed this current proposal.

We were unaware of this proposed tuition freeze until yesterday, and believe that such an action would have a devastating effect on our ability to continue to meet the educational needs of Kansas citizens. The budget is still in deliberation and debate will continue when the Legislature returns to session in late April.”

What do you think? Would a tuition freeze actually have a devastating effect on our ability to meet education needs, or is K-State simply afraid of losing the ability to raise tuition rates again?