Easing impact — 04/23/08

Sat, May 17 2008

— Instead of approving a flat 9.5 percent increase in tuition, Morehead State University officials have requested the Council on Postsecondary Education approve a different method of assessing tuition. It is a change that university officials say will cost about 80 percent of current MSU students less money than a flat 9.5 percent tuition hike, while discouraging students from enrolling in courses they have no intention of completing.
Currently, all full-time students at Morehead — and every other state-supported university — pay the same tuition whether they are taking 12 credit hours, the minimum needed to be considered a full-time student, or 20 credit hours. Under the tuition plan MSU has submitted to the CPE for approval, students beginning with the fall semester would pay $225 per credit hour for the first 12 hours and $45 per hour for credit above 12.
If the council approves MSU’s proposal — and we can’t imagine why it would not — the typical full-time student taking 15 hours of credit would pay 7.4 more in tuition next fall instead of 9.5 percent. In contrast, students taking a heavy load of classes would see their tuition go up by more than 9.5 percent.
Because it now costs no more in tuition for a student to take 21 hours or more than it does to take 15 hours, Beth Patrick, MSU vice president for planning, budgets and technology, said some students sign up for more courses than they could reasonably be expected to complete. Then, when those students drop classes after the deadline has passed for adding classes, those classroom slots are left empty.
In the fall of 2007, Patrick said such drops added up to 99 class sections. “That makes it difficult to be efficient,” she said.
Indeed, it does. It also is unfair to students who were denied enrollment in some classes because they were full only to have space become available in those classes because students dropped them.
While students taking heavy course loads will see their rate of tuition exceed 9.5 percent under MSU’s proposal, those students could save money in the long run. By earning more credit hours per semester, they will be able to graduate sooner. For students living on campus, the savings they would realize by being able to complete their requirements for an undergraduate degree in 3 years or 31/2 years will more than offset the higher rates of tuition they will pay for the heavy course loads they take each semester.
Don’t misunderstand us: MSU still is asking students to pay significantly more for their education next fall than they now are. Even with the lower rate of increase under the MSU proposal, tuition for most full-time students will jump from $2,640 per semester to $2,835.
With universities having their state funding cut another 3 percent in the fiscal year beginning July 1 after experience a 3 percent cut this year, another round of a sharp increases in tuition was a certainty. However, give Morehead State officials an A for creativity and trying to minimize the impact of tuition hikes for most students.