The UCF Board of Trustees approved a $1.4 billion dollar budget on Thursday, without raising the tuition as of yet.
However, it was discussed that there could be a possible 1.7% undergraduate tuition increase for the 2013-2014 school year, generating an extra $1.6 million dollars for the university. The increase is due to a provision that allows tuition to be raised automatically to keep up with the cost of living if the State Legislature does not increase it themselves.
This caused confusion between the Trustees because on Monday Florida Gov. Rick Scott vetoed a state-wide university tuition increase of 3%. The trustees settled on passing a motion to talk more about the increase if it is deemed discretionary by the Florida Legislature, if not then UCF will have to take the 1.7% increase along with the 11 other Florida Universities.
When the increase was discussed, UCF Board of Trustee members had differing opinions. Trustee Marcos Marchena said that if the increase is discretionary he would vote against it, new trustee member Reid Oetjen said he would be in favor of the increase, and newly-elected SGA president Melissa Westbrook said that she would get a student response before anything.
Following the tuition increase discussion, UCF President John C. Hitt announced that the UCF Arena will be renamed with CFE Federal Credit Union Arena, or CFE arena for short. The deal was reached on terms of $3.95 million dollars over the span of seven years.
“CFE Credit Union has acquired the naming rights of the UCF Arena which will now be known as the CFE Federal Credit Union Arena. We can’t think of a better partner for one of our campuses most prominent facilites.” President Hitt said at the meeting.
