Ohio University President Roderick McDavis announced today he would request a tuition and fee increase from the Board of Trustees, a change that could cost students up to $334 more next year and will allow the university to make “strategic investments.”
OU’s Budget Planning Council recently recommended tuition, fee and housing increases for main campus students, as well as a tuition increase for regional campus students, and McDavis said he is supportive of those recommendations.
The campuswide message McDavis distributed today says he will request “a modest tuition and fee increase” from the Board of Trustees at the board’s June 24 meeting. However, although a tentative budget bases possible investments on a 3.5 percent tuition increase, the actual percentage increase McDavis will recommend could still be affected by budget planning in Columbus, said Pam Benoit, executive vice president and provost.
“At this point, (McDavis is) supportive of the BPC recommendations, but the legislature could still have some impact on what is being taken to the board,” Benoit said. “The legislature is not finished with its work yet. The state budget has an impact on our budget. If there happens to be changes at the state level … that might have some impact on the recommendations to the board.”
The Board of Trustees stipulated earlier this year that the university’s $9.64 million budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year needed to be solved first without accounting for a tuition increase. Each academic and support unit released a budget scenario at the end of April describing ways to compensate for its budget cuts.
Despite faculty concerns about a higher percentage cut — .85 percent — to academic units, McDavis will not request a change to the proposed reduction targets for units across campus, Benoit said.
In several meetings last month, BPC recommended a 1.5 tuition increase at OU’s branch campuses, as well as a 3.5 tuition and fee increase and a 2.5 housing increase on OU’s main campus.
The branch campus tuition increase would bring in an additional $700,000 and would cost individual students between $65.93 and $75.51 more a year.
The increase in main campus tuition and fees would cost all students about $334 more a year. It would raise in-state tuition and fees to $9,871 and out-of-state tuition and fees to $18,835.
With the 2.5 percent housing increase, the cost of a standard double, currently $5,325 a year, would go up to $5,458 next year.
“We will, as we have done in the past couple of years, try to be sensitive to affordability,” McDavis said in an interview last month. “We understand that every time we increase tuition and fees, that’s an added cost to students and parents. We’re sensitive to that, but we’re also sensitive to continuing to offer a quality education. With the decrease in state funding, an increase in tuition might help us to do that.”
Rather than filling the $9.64 million budget hole, the increased tuition money would go toward strategic investments for the university, Benoit said.
These would include further development of the Bachelor of Nursing program, additional support for learning communities, more staffing for the Office of Disability Services and technology upgrades for the student information system, according to McDavis’ message.
McDavis added that additional investments could include more undergraduate financial aid, increased graduate student wages, deferred infrastructure maintenance and an employee total compensation pool that included a 1.66 percent raise pool, parking and a healthcare offset.
“At this point, the budget has been built on a 3.5 tuition increase (for) these strategic investments that we think are pretty critical to the university,” Benoit said.
rm279109@ohiou.edu
@ThePostCampus
