About 20 people gathered in Grover Center to hear next year’s potential changes at Ohio University.
A 3.5-percent tuition increase, suggested by OU’s Budget Planning Council, will be voted on at the OU Board of Trustees’ April meeting.
If the board votes in favor of the increase, OU’s room and board will increase by $250 annually and tuition will increase by $350 annually.
However, even if the tuition increase is passed, the university will still have to make cuts to fill a $5 million gap, said Pam Benoit, executive vice president and provost.
“You can always cut your way to a balanced budget, but that’s going to have a greater impact on quality,” Benoit said.
Though OU has had several tuition increases during the past 10 years, Joseph McLaughlin, chairman of Faculty Student Senate, told the audience not to assume the university is “keeping up” despite these tuition increases.
Benoit said the university is in the process of establishing different sources of revenue, besides tuition and state funding, which she said has decreased significantly in the past decade.
“We’re thinking about every possibility,” Benoit said. “We’re very creative with that and different ways of doing that. That’s where our heads are now.”
Torin Jacobs, a senior studying education, said he believes some of the cuts should be taken from the administration and its staff, adding that he has a hard time understanding why faculty salary increases are being considered as future expenses in the $5 million gap.
“They cut everyone else but themselves,” Jacobs said.
However, McLaughlin countered by saying that administration has made significant cuts to “trim staff wherever we can.”
Tyler Barton, a senior studying chemistry, said he wants to encourage university officials to analyze student-loan debt and perform studies that show how it will be exacerbated by a tuition increase.
“I love the university and the faculty, but we can’t ask students to take more loan debt,” Barton said.
sj950610@ohiou.edu
