Most students at Ohio University are aware of the recent increase in their tuition price. However, students may be surprised to learn OU has one of the highest net tuition prices in the country.
The U.S. Board of Education’s College Affordability and Transparency Center recently released a list ranking 33, four-year public universities throughout the country with the highest net tuition prices — what students are required to pay after accounting for grants and scholarship aid. OU comes in at No. 13.
The state of Ohio holds five positions in the top-ranked universities: Miami University at No. 2; Ohio State University at No. 10; Ohio University at No. 13 University of Cincinnati at No. 14; and Kent State University at No. 30.
“Part of the reason for the high ranking of Ohio schools is the level of state support that subsidizes public education has been declining,” said Chad Mitchell, interim budget director of Finance at OU. “As an outlet for the decline in state funding, tuition prices increase.”
James D. Plummer, vice president for Finance at UC, and Claire Wagner, director of news and public information at Miami, both agreed the decline in state funding has attributed to their tuition increases.
“Tuition and state support are the two largest revenue generators for state institutions,” Plummer said. “When one is low, you will find the other is high.”
Student population at OU has increased close to 20 percent in the past 10 years. However, the university — costing $17,702 in net tuition a year — has also had a fairly substantial reduction in staffing, Mitchell said.
“We fully understand that we need to maintain access to the professors for our students. We’ve become very efficient at teaching the larger classes, and we won’t purposefully increase class price in order to cut costs,” he said. “We want to keep quality while gaining efficiency.”
A major factor in UC’s ranking was the lack of adjustment in tuition price when the university became a state-supported school in 1977, Plummer said. As a city institution, tuition prices were higher. When the university became state-supported, Ohio did not provide additional funding to help adjust tuition to match others in the system. UC now costs $17,644 in net tuition a year, he said.
Miami attributes its higher tuition to the fact that the university employs many professors to keep the class sizes smaller and support a better professor-student ratio, Wagner said. In addition, Miami — costing $22,303 in net tuition a year — also has one of the highest graduation rates in the country, with 81.5 percent graduating at a rate of 3.7 years.
“Although it may seem like our students pay a lot of money,” Wagner said, “the cost of completion rate becomes the lowest because that net tuition number is the cost for four years, but they are getting out earlier than that and therefore paying less.”
Wagner said Miami has a special scholarship program for Ohio students with low incomes. Last year, 14 percent of Ohio students paid no tuition or fees, and 10 percent above that paid $5,000 or less because of the aid they were offered.
UC also plans to implement more scholarship aid and discounts, and to hold tuition increases to a minimum, Plummer said.
Although tuition prices have been rising nationwide — with a national average increase of 8 percent in 2012 — OU is still below that average with an increase of 3.5 percent.
The national average increase for room and board is at 4 percent, while OU has only increased by 2 percent, Mitchell said.
“If we do have to increase, we’ve been making sure that we focus them on our academic needs and less on room and board,” he said.
OU is planning on “growing around the edges,” Mitchell said, by expanding e-learning and graduate professional programs, utilizing regional campuses and growing the university endowment to use for student financial aid.
“We need to be cognizant of the concerns of student debt and household budget problems,” Mitchell said. “We want to be able to utilize as much financial aid as possible for the students.”
jb351009@ohiou.edu
