Ball State University students could see an increase of up to $525 in tuition and fees next year if the Board of Trustees approves a plan at today's meeting.
Ball State officials presented proposed tuition and fee increases at a public forum Thursday. In-state students would see a tuition increase of 4.9 percent in both the 2007-08 and 2008-09 school years for price jumps of $156 and $164 for students who started school after Summer 2003. The increase for in-state students who started before Summer 2003 would be $129 for 2007-08 and $134 for 2008-09.
Out-of-state tuition would increase by 6 percent both years This would increase out-of-state tuition $512 for students who started after Summer 2003, bringing tuition to a total of $8,870 per semester for 2007-08.
In 2005-06, in-state tuition increased 4.8 percent and out-of-state increased 5.8 percent. For the 2006-07 academic year, in-state tuition increased 5.5 percent and out-of state increased 6 percent.
Starting Fall semester, technology fees would increase by $7 each year, bringing the cost to $163 per semester in 2007-08 and $171 in 2008-09.
Under this proposal, health fees would increase by $6 per year, taking the cost to $75 and $79 per semester. Summer health fees, however, would decrease to $40 in Summer 2008 and $42 in Summer 2009.
Tom Kinghorn, treasurer and vice president for Business Affairs, said he and other university officials put a significant amount of time into weighing all the factors of Ball State's budget when trying to set tuition for the next two years.
"Our goal is to keep tuition and fees at the lowest level possible while at the same time providing a level of access appropriate for our kind of institution and providing a quality experience," he said.
Kinghorn said much of the money from the tuition increase would go toward competitive salaries and benefits for faculty. Kinghorn proposed that 64 percent go toward a 4 percent salary raise and a 9.5 percent increase in health care benefits.
Lorie Zimmerman, a parent of a Ball State junior, said she worried about how to meet this increase, especially because she has two other children to put through school. Ball State officials Tom Taylor and Robert Zellers said they understood that students from mid-income families sometimes miss out on aid.
But Kinghorn said Ball State hoped to remedy this with an addition of about $725,000 to university-provided student aid.
"The idea [of the aid increase] is to offset the additional cost for those students who have financial aid," Kinghorn said.
Others might still need to search for loans or merit-based scholarships to make up for the increase, he said.
Both Kinghorn and President Jo Ann Gora said during Thursday's forum that the tuition increase would allow the university to continue serving students at the level they expect.
"The quality of [the college] experience should be the finest, and that, of course, is always our goal," Gora said.
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