Facing a budget crunch, the Board of Trustees will debate a significant tuition hike on Thursday, Feb. 7. The 3:00 p.m. meeting will be held in Golden Eagles room and will be open to the public.
If approved, the change would mean students who enrolled in 2004 and before will face a large increase in their tuition. This will not affect students enrolled 2005 and after, their tuition rates are locked in for four years because of the Truth in Tuition law. The students that enrolled in 2004 were the first cohorts of students to have their tuition locked for four years under Truth in Tuition.
“The University is having a decrease in state funding, and it doesn’t look good this year or next year,” said Mark Wilcockson, V.P. for Finance and Administration, echoing the rationale for the proposed tuition increase that was brought to the Board of Trustees meeting in Nov. 2007.
Stating the reasons for the flatness of state funding going towards higher education, Don Sevener, Deputy Director of External Relations at the Illinois Board of Higher Education, said
“not enough tax revenue and a downturn in the economy.”
In the Nov. 2007 meeting, Wilcockson said that the state funding is flat and the cost of running the University is rising, there are only two other veins of income for the school: one is gifts and grants, the other is tuition. He explained that gifts and grants aren’t very secure and are 0infrequent. Tuition is the vein that is left and can change when the need arises, he added.
The proposed tuition increase will be 25 percent for the student who enrolled in 2004. Also, a proposed 9 percent increase will be for the students enrolled before 2004. This means students enrolled since 2004 will be paying $155 next year per credit hour (PCH), as opposed to the $124 PCH they were paying. Also the ‘continuing students’ enrolled before 2004 will be paying $170 PCH where they were paying $156 PCH.
There are other increases in the fees all students pay. Students currently pay $10.10 PCH for parking; part of this fee goes to paying off state issued bonds, which will be paid off by 2036. The fee is planned to go up to $10.70 PCH. The student union fee was $6.60 PCH and is planned to go to 6.75 PCH, and part of this fee will pay off a bond that is to be paid by 2014.
According to this proposal, the total tuition for a full-time student (12 credit hours) will be $2,424.00 (per semester) next year for the students enrolled since 2004. This is a $658.40 jump. Tuition will be $2,604.00 (per semester) next year for the students enrolled before 2004, which is a $254.40 jump from this year. These figures include parking but exclude the $474.00 for health insurance.
Another key factor in the tuition increase is that enrollment, while it has a general upward trend, has dropped 5.3 percent in the last couple years. “We are focused on this issue,” Wilcockson said. He added that the University is working to increase enrollment. “We just need to understand why there is a decrease in enrollment,” Wilcockson said. “But over the long-term we’re still doing well,” he added.
Provost Lawrence P. Frank, commenting on state funding at the Nov. 2007 Board meeting said, “This is not just an issue here, it is a statewide issue.”