AU students' tuition and housing costs will rise by 6 percent annually in 2008 and 2009 in the budgets passed by the board of trustees Friday, according to Interim Provost Ivy Broder and Vice President of Finance Donald Myers.
The board also allowed for two modifications to the increase. In the board's plan, undergraduate tuition for summer classes will not increase during the next two years. Additionally, the university will wait to increase the tuition rate for graduate students in the Kogod School of Business's Master of Business Administration program until 2009. At that point, they will raise it by 3 percent, Myers said.
He said they decided to freeze summer tuition increases after discovering AU's summer classes had become the most expensive per credit hour in the Washington metropolitan area.
Broder said they then decided to freeze that particular tuition rate for two years "with the hope of bringing it in line with the other local institutions and trying to attract more students to take courses at AU during the summer."
She said they decided that Kogod's MBA tuition rate needed to be frozen for a year because Kogod officials wanted to keep the school appropriately priced in comparison to other business schools.
Currently, the flat tuition rate for full-time undergraduates is $14,603 per semester. Undergraduates who take more than 17 credit hours in a semester currently have to pay $973 for each additional credit hour. Full-time students enrolled in Kogod's MBA program currently pay $13,702 in tuition for up to 17 credits. MBA students who take more than 17 credits currently have to pay an additional $1,048 for each additional credit hour, according to information from the Office of Student Accounts Web site.
Although the budgets also call for an adjustment in parking rates, it will not affect student rates, Myers said.
The university's budget for 2008 is approximately $402 million, while the budget for 2009 is approximately $428 million. University-funded financial aid will rise in the new budget to remain in line with the tuition rate. Additionally, the budget includes funds for a merit-based pay raise of 3.7 percent annually for faculty and staff.
Financial aid and salaries make up more than half the university's budgets for both years. Compensation costs make up 45 percent of each year's budget, while financial aid makes up an additional 19 percent of it, according to Myers.
AU will continue to increase the number of full-time faculty members over the next two years. The university will add seven full-time faculty spots in 2008, and an additional eight in 2009. The increases are part of an ongoing initiative to change faculty conditions on campus, according to Broder.
"It will reduce the number of adjunct faculty members so we're relying more on full-time faculty," Broder said. "It will also help us to make progress on our variable load policy for faculty members, which means supporting faculty members who are very research-active by giving them lower teaching loads. It also helps us to support our University College program."
Another large portion of the budgets will go to funding the construction of the new building for the School of International Service and the renovation and conversion of the McKinley Building into the new headquarters for the School of Communication. The university budgeted $45 million in total construction costs for the new SIS building and $25 million for the McKinley renovation. The university hopes to recuperate $20 million through fund raising for each project, according to Myers.
The university is also setting aside approximately $1.5 million to enhance its marketing strategy and improve the university's Web site. They also included room for possible adjustments in the cost of things such as health care and utilities, according to Myers.
The budgetary planning process was somewhat different this cycle because of the reformation of the University Budget Committee. Although the Budget Committee had been responsible for putting the budget together for many years, the President's Council had held that responsibility more recently. During the past year, Interim President Neil Kerwin decided to reconstitute the committee, according to Myers.
Broder said Kerwin decided to reconstitute the committee after the Faculty Senate proposed the idea.
"They felt that in recent years, the budget process had not been as open as it had been previously," she said. "So in the spirit of the increasing accountability and transparency of the campus, the faculty presented a proposal to me. I passed it on to Dr. Kerwin. Don Myers and I and [Kerwin] all talked about it and [Kerwin] agreed that it would be a good thing to reconstitute this committee and get more input from different campus constituencies."
The 12-member committee included representatives from the faculty, the staff and students. The two student representatives, Student Government Comptroller Rob Donigian and Graduate Leadership Council Executive Chair Wade Murphy, participated fully in the committee's activities, Myers said.
According to Myers, students also influenced the process by commenting at two town hall meetings prior to the budget's passage. Additionally, Murphy and SG President Ashley Mushnick sat on the board's Finance and Investment Committee, which oversees the budget formulation process.
During the next few weeks, the board will distribute a detailed summary of the budget to the campus community. The summary will include graphs and charts analyzing how AU's tuition compares with the tuition charged at other institutions, Myers said.
"Two years ago, we were right about in the middle, in the median," he said. "We're not allowed to collect or compare information, but based on where we've been historically we believe we'll still be in that range over the next two years"
