Lincoln Journal Star, NE
03-26-06
ISU-UNL vet partnership leaves some students in lurch
By MATTHEW HANSEN / Lincoln Journal Star
Jimmy Dager wears a big belt buckle. He drives a big Ford truck. And now he and his parents must pay a big tuition bill when he starts Kansas State University’s veterinary school, the school that, until last year, the Lincoln Southeast High School graduate could’ve attended on the cheap.
For the past two decades, Nebraska veterinary students could pay in-state tuition at K-State under an agreement reached long ago by Kansas State and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which has no veterinary school.
Last year, UNL decided to partner with Iowa State University’s vet school instead — a new deal more financially beneficial to UNL, but also a deal that worried some Nebraska veterinarians.
Now students like Dager, a Kansas State senior who had already been accepted to veterinary school, are caught in the lurch.
Should he go to Kansas State and pay nearly three times as much as he expected?
Or should he apply to Iowa State so he can get the in-state tuition deal at a university he never planned to attend?
“He’s angry,” says his mother, Ginger Dager. “He thinks they made a promise and now they’ve taken it away.
“I’m quite sure my son isn’t the only one saying, ‘Wait a second here.’”
In August, Nebraska sent its first crop of 25 students to Iowa State for four years of vet school, much the same way it shipped 25 students to Kansas State for the past two decades.
Starting next year, Nebraska vet students will study for two years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, then finish up at Iowa State.
The option to start the so-called “2-by-2” program was the reason UNL contracted with Iowa State instead Kansas State, university leaders said last year.
Its chief benefit: $1.4 million annually in tuition money UNL gets to keep instead of sending to another university.
UNL hoped the 2-and-2 program could begin in August 2006, but a lengthy Iowa State study of the plan pushed the start date back a year, said Alan Moeller, UNL’s assistant vice chancellor for the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
The university already has hired two faculty members and plans to hire six more in time to teach first- and second-year veterinary classes by fall 2007.
In the meantime, state funds continue to pay for Nebraska students who were already attending K-State when UNL’s deal with that university expired.
But those who were a year or two from starting veterinary school?
“They got caught in the middle of the transition,” Moeller says.
Moeller says his office fielded lots of phone calls right after UNL announced the deal with Iowa State, but says he hasn’t heard from a concerned student in months.
Ron Elmore, associate dean of veterinary medicine at K-State, says five or six Nebraska students attend KSU as undergrads every year, partially because they plan to take advantage of the in-state veterinary school tuition.
Nebraska students have continued to enroll there since the KSU-UNL partnership expired, he said.
“There’s obviously been students here that expressed disappointment,” Elmore said.
Dager still plans to go to Kansas State because he’s sold on its top-notch veterinary program, says his mom.
But the family is considering legal action against UNL, Kansas State or both, she says, hoping to recoup some of the $150,000 difference in tuition.
She claims K-State promised her son in-state veterinary school tuition. Elmore denies the school ever promised a student that.
Says Ginger Dager: “It feels like we don’t have any advocates in this situation. It’s frustrating.”
Reach Matthew Hansen at 473-7245 or .