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BU president calls tuition costs and fees unavoidable

College of Communication freshman KellyAnn Kirkpatrick’s scholarship from the Posse Foundation enabled her to enroll in Boston University. Still, she said tuition costs are too high.

“I probably wouldn’t have been able to continue my education [without Posse],” she said. “I think financial ability is what’s standing in a lot of people’s way to getting education on the next level, so hopefully we can do something about it.”

Colleges may be at risk of losing federal financial aid if they don’t lower their tuition costs, as President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union Address this month. While BU’s tuition increases each year, officials said containing the cost might be inevitable.

BU President Robert Brown said Obama’s appeal to colleges might not address the relationship between tuition and academic quality.

“The premise seems to be that we can maintain our programs and our quality without revenue increases,” Brown told The Daily Free Press in an email interview. “This isn’t the case.”

If tuition and fees did not increase every year, Brown said BU would have to cut classes, faculty members and funding for need-based financial aid.

“Holding tuition flat would diminish the quality of our programs in the near term and, most likely, cause us to reduce financial aid, narrowing opportunities for students with the greatest need to attend Boston University,” he said.

Tuition covers about half the university’s total expenses, according to BU’s Common Data set.

The other half came from donations and endowments, as well as federal assistance programs.

Julie Wickstrom, director of the Office of Financial Assistance, declined comment. However, she told The DFP in a Sept. 13 article that while BU does not “struggle” to give financial assistance to its students, it faces a number of challenges to its ability to provide a sufficient amount.

Kirkpatrick said if tuition goes up, the amount of scholarship money coming from the school would need to increase as well.

“You’re going to need to be willing to offer assistance to students who need it, especially if you’re looking for the cream of the crop,” she said. “Sometimes the best of the best aren’t in the top 1 percent or 2 percent that can afford to spend $60,000 a year.”

A number of students said problems in high tuition costs continue to affect them. Amelia Scott, a freshman in the School of Hospitality Administration, said high costs might deter students from attending BU.

“The middle-ranking schools will get more of the students and the higher-ranking schools will get [fewer] students,” she said. “So to make sure our reputation stays intact, we need to make sure that everybody can come and keep on coming.”

COM sophomore Sean Griffin, who receives federal financial aid, said he wishes the tuition cost were lower but understands the financial pressure BU faces.

“We’re in a major city, and it’s incredibly expensive to try and run [what is] basically a

business . . . especially in such a prime location,” Griffin said.

Although no proposals or steps from the Obama administration have been made or suggested, Brown said he worried about the possibility of federal aid cuts, specifically the Pell grant and federal loan programs offered to students.

“Cuts in these federal programs would negatively impact the most vulnerable portion of our student body,” he said.

BU increased its financial aid funds to compensate for rising need among students, according to a DFP article on Sept. 13. The loss of the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent Grant and the Academic Competitiveness Grant caused BU to lose $1.7 million in federal financial aid.

Even if federal aid is cut, a lot of extra scholarship money exists that BU students often miss, Kirkpatrick said.

“I’m not saying I disagree with the way BU spends their money,” she said, “but I do think that there’s probably a lot of money that’s sitting up there and that is for students and they just don’t know how to attain it.”

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One Comment

  1. It’s interesting how we can make so many claims about if BU increasing tuition is justified or not WHEN WE DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE OUR MONEY GOES. BU refuses to publish its budget! Why exactly does tuition cost $40,000+ a year–where exactly does that money go? We have a right to see how our money is spent and justify for ourselves if its being spent appropriately and therefore worthy of our money.