Graduate pro­grams hit hard­est by tuition hikes as uni­ver­sity strug­gles with state and fed­eral fund­ing woes

The Ferris State Board of Trustees voted Monday, July 8 to increase tuition for full time under­grad­u­ate stu­dents by 5.33 per­cent to $316 per credit hour.

While stu­dents will pay the increased amount in full at the start of term, the uni­ver­sity plans to use $1.39 mil­lion in Federal Stimulus monies to issue a rebate, affec­tively low­er­ing the per credit cost to around $311. When those checks, which should be around $5 per credit hour for full time stu­dents, will be dis­trib­uted is still not clear accord­ing to Leah Nixon, assis­tant direc­tor for new services

Ferris has increased tuition for under­grad stu­dents by a total of 13 per­cent in the last six years in addi­tion to cut­ting spend­ing by $15 mil­lion in the last eight years. A two to four per­cent cut for most depart­ments around cam­pus along with other cost reduc­ing changes yielded an over­all sav­ings of around $2.5 mil­lion in the last year alone.

Students enrolled in one of the grad­u­ate pro­grams at Ferris State can expect a $425 tab per credit hour while College of Pharmacy and College of Optometry stu­dents who are res­i­dents of the state of Michigan can expect $504 and $514 per credit hour, respec­tively.
The increase in costs has forced accel­er­ated sec­ond year phar­macy stu­dent Julie Brockway and many of her fel­low class­mates to seek a Graduate Plus loan who was sur­prised by the increase of $26 from $478 last year.

“My Ferris based schol­ar­ships are done after this year, since it’s only for four years, so I’ve got to find other ways to pay,” said Brockway.

A schol­ar­ship ini­tia­tive to help ease the eco­nomic bur­den on the fam­i­lies of Ferris stu­dents called “Opportunity @ 125” is tied in with the 125 Anniversary and is aimed towards stu­dents with high finan­cial need. This idea was first pre­sented last April as a way of help­ing stu­dents who were neg­a­tively affected by the recent eco­nomic troubles.

“The strength of our enroll­ment growth is an indi­ca­tion that stu­dents see Ferris’ career-oriented degrees as a path to suc­cess in these dif­fi­cult times,” said President David Eisler regard­ing the university’s con­tin­ued growth to nearly 13,000 stu­dents enrolled at the Big Rapids, Grand Rapids, Kendall College and satel­lite cam­puses, though the uni­ver­sity has worked through a $6.9 mil­lion decrease in state and fed­eral fund­ing since 2003.

In the same meet­ing the Board of Trustees voted to increase tuition and approved a bud­get of $175.7 mil­lion for Fiscal Year 2010, President Eisler’s con­tract was extended another year and he was offered a three per­cent raise. Eisler declined the raise due to the cur­rent eco­nomic chal­lenges of Michigan and main­tains an annual salary of $235,000.

Saginaw Valley State University had the high­est increase at 6.33 per­cent fol­lowed by Western Michigan University and University of Michigan at around 5.7 percent.

Editor’s Note:

The Torch cal­cu­lated the per­cent­ages and fig­ures by divid­ing the rel­e­vant year by the pre­vi­ous year and trun­cat­ing the change to the sec­ond. Official fig­ures were given to the Torch in doc­u­ments pro­vided by the office of Admissions and Records.