University of Alaska draft budget seeks $31.4 million more and new student housing

The University of Alaska would ask the state for $31.4 million more to run its campuses in fiscal 2028, plus $127.4 million for buildings led by student housing, under a draft budget a regents' committee reviews Monday.

Most of the operating increase, $21.2 million, would cover costs the university says it already faces, such as raises, health care and utilities. The rest would pay for new programs, including recruiting students from outside Alaska.

Housing leads the building list. At the University of Alaska Anchorage, where the housing waitlist has reached as high as 500 students, the draft seeks $54 million for two 200-room residence halls. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks, it seeks $65 million to replace graduate and family housing in buildings nearly 70 years old. The university would finance $51.6 million of the housing cost itself. The draft also asks for $60 million for overdue repairs, against a $1.8 billion backlog across 397 facilities.

The recruiting requests come as the university prepares to drop out-of-state tuition systemwide in fall 2027, under an August vote by the regents. The University of Alaska Southeast dropped it for undergraduates this fall, and new out-of-state students there were up 33% from a year earlier as of July, the university said. Under the draft, UAF would spend $2.5 million recruiting students from the Lower 48 and abroad. UAA would spend $1.45 million recruiting from outside Alaska, $1 million on workforce training for the proposed Alaska LNG project and $1.575 million to help pre-nursing students.

The cost increases include $5.2 million for raises, $5.7 million for health care and $3.2 million for utilities. Raises for crafts and trades workers and graduate workers, whose contracts expire this fiscal year, and for the staff union CAUSE, which is still negotiating its first contract, would be requested separately.

A second, smaller tier of the request includes $3.5 million to start offering bachelor's degrees at four UAA community campuses. Regents would also approve a separate $51.9 million list, including $36 million for UAF's drone program, but keep it out of the formal request.

The packet includes a university table comparing its requests with what the state provided: $39 million of $73.6 million this year, and $170.4 million of $795.3 million over 10 years.

The full Board of Regents is scheduled to vote on the requests Nov. 6. They then go to the governor and the Legislature.