The Government of Guam's 22 percent pay increase isn't sitting well with all.

About a week after the pay raises for government employees became law, the University of Guam acting president Randall Wiegand shared lingering issues with one section of Public Law 24-37.

Section 15 of the public law states, “as a condition of receiving this appropriation, the University of Guam shall not raise tuition for any semester prior to September 30th, 2025."

Weigand called the language of the “tuition freeze” problematic and conflicts with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges or WASC Senior College and University Commission Accreditation standards. It's what the university must follow.

Wiegand adding the law also poses a problem since the university doesn’t plan nor has there been a discussion to increase tuition in the next coming academic year.

"There’s a standard for institutional autonomy that WASC gives to us that all substance of decisions that need to be made by the university and they want to protect and make sure that everybody is going to have a good education and want everything to be, they want the university to be autonomous," he said. "We've been losing students. Students have been citing financial issues and it's not a good time for us to try to raise tuition. We're trying to avoid that."

Though it would ideally take longer for the university to lose accreditation, Wiegand said UOG has been cited for a similar issue in the past.

"It’s kind of a red flag is the best way to describe it," he said. "They’ll give you time to try and fix things so we’re not talking about the loss of accreditation here it’s just more we feel like a boundary was crossed and we’d like to talk about that."

UOG officials still meeting with the senators over the next few weeks in hopes to resolve the issue.

Education committee chair Sen. Chris Barnett told KUAM News, "It was an amendment in Bill 24-37 that passed with the bill, which is now law. The amendment said if UOG wants to accept the appropriation for their 22% pay raises, they could not raise tuition rates for FY 23 and FY 24. It passed without objection. We did this because UOG said if they didn’t get their full budget request, they would have to raise tuition. That’s why we gave them that choice when accepting the money for raises (which they also asked for) so we wanted to make sure if we gave them the raises they wouldn’t turn around and raise tuition for students. We have also committed to fully funding their budget request so they don’t have to raise tuition."