The Board of Regents increased tuition and fees Tuesday, axed tuition guarantees and bumped up tuition flat rates to encourage students to take 15 hours. And the University administration is encouraging further action by the Regents in requesting the addition of a furlough clause to tenured faculty contracts.

These moves reflect more than just a slashed state budget.

The Regents and the administration are stripping students and faculty of their contractual guarantees. Fueled by the uncertainty of state funding, the administration is positioning itself in a way that will allow for spontaneous changes – whether it is a new fee, further tuition increases or faculty furloughs. The administration is preparing for the worst in its fight to keep the University out of the red and up to par with its competitors.

Tuesday’s tuition increases come without much surprise – University President Michael Adams has been pitching that proposal all year. Even the $100 semester fee was to be expected.

It was the hike in credit hours that slipped through the cracks and blindsided the University community. To be clear, none of the Regents’ decisions will directly affect University students currently enrolled in the “Fixed for Four” guaranteed tuition plan.

But increasing demands for credits among incoming freshman could affect class size and availability in the coming years.

Breana Bittman, a sophomore from Bainebridge, said demand for classes in her major is so high that she picked up a second major, just so she could enroll in upper-level courses. “I’m running out of electives to take,” said Bittman, an international affairs and political science major.

And more credit hours doesn’t equal more tuition dollars under the University’s new flat-rate tuition model.

So what is the Regents’ motive here?

Credit-hour enrollment is a critical factor in determining the University’s state funds – which are 38 percent of the University’s overall budget.

“The funding formula is a mathematical calculation based on credit hours students take and is used to generate the instructional formula,” said Regents’ spokesman John Millsaps in a phone interview Wednesday. The state uses the instructional formula to determine how much money every state school and college will receive each fiscal year, he said.

One University official said he recalled the days when a quarter system, encouraging high credit-hour enrollment, returned plump figures from the funding formula.

“Back in the days when we were on the quarter system everyone took three five-hour courses per quarter,” said Tom Jackson, vice president for public affairs. “When we changed to the semester system the idea was that students would take five three-hour courses. But [students] stopped doing that and they went to taking 12 [credits]. When [students] did that it crippled credit hour production and hurt our formula funding.”

Fattening up formula funding isn’t the only motive behind increasing credit hours.

The administration is also aiming to shove fifth-year prospects through the arches on time.

“Fifteen hours is not an unreasonable class load,” Jackson said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We need to get people up to taking 15 hours … That way students get through with college in four years.”

Caitlin Herndon, a senior from Atlanta, said she works as a resident assistant to pay for her housing.

“I applied to eight law schools last semester,” she said. “It was like a full-time class. So I had to take 12 hours.”

Students like Herndon on the “Fixed for Four” plan will not have to worry about taking on extra courses. But as next year’s incoming freshmen and the classes that follow progress through the University, concerns like Herndon’s will begin to weigh in. Incoming freshmen will also have to swallow the fact that their freshman-year tuition rates could look very different from their senior-year rates – because the administration will offer no guarantees in a tough economy.

The University’s no-guarantees-plan goes for faculty, as well.

The administration is gradually chipping away at the institution of tenure – a permanent job contract that protects faculty from furloughs and unjustified termination.

The chiseling began a decade ago when the University instituted “post-tenure review,” a policy requiring all tenured professors to justify their standing before a group of peers. Lack of approval from their peers could override the contract’s promise of security.

Now, the administration is petitioning for another breach to tenured faculty contracts with the addition of a furlough clause.

Adding the clause would put the University in a more “flexible” position to deal with budget deficits, as Vice President of Academic Affairs and Provost Arnett Mace has said repeatedly in interviews with The Red & Black.

Adding the clause also would weaken the University’s support for its tenured professors – a move that many Georgia legislators would likely endorse.

Taken as a whole, the Regents’ and University administration’s recent deliberations signify a tangible separation from contractual obligations to students and faculty.