The total cost to attend Boston University will jump to just shy of $46,000 for the next academic year, a 4.72 percent increase university officials say is necessary to offset rising costs and fund academic opportunities.
In a March 15 letter to parents and students, President Robert Brown said although the university “tried to minimize this year’s increase,” the $45,880 cost of full tuition, room and board for the 2007-08 academic year “is still an additional burden.”
Tuition will increase by $1,600 to $34,930, and the minimum rate for room and board will be raised to $10,950, up from $10,480.
About half of BU’s annual budget comes from tuition, said BU spokesman Colin Riley. The university’s 2007-08 fiscal year budget is “nearly complete,” he added.
“We are a tuition-dependent school,” he said. “Students are making an investment in themselves and their futures. Education is an investment.”
Although some students may suspect their tuition dollars are going toward infrastructure and construction projects such as the Student Village 2 dormitory, Riley said this is not true and the Student Village project is “self-sustaining.”
The tuition increase will be a way to offset rising university costs of energy, healthcare and insurance premiums, he said.
Riley said in the past seven to eight years, the rate of BU’s tuition hikes have been among the lowest in its history. The increase for the 2006-07 school year was 5.9 percent, which was also the national average for public and private institutions, according to College Board’s 2006-07 Annual Survey of Colleges statistics.
The survey’s numbers continue to show how four-year private colleges and universities in New England have the highest prices in the country. The average total cost at private institutions in New England was $38,112, whereas the country’s other schools averaged $30,367, according to the Annual Survey of Colleges.
The tuition hike will fund academic opportunities, including an 8.4 percent increase in the College of Arts and Sciences’s programming budget because of its “core role” within BU, Riley said.
An additional $1 million will be put toward student activities to improve student life on campus, Riley said. Other increased funding will be provided to departments such as the International Programs Office, which is responsible for study-abroad programs.
Brown wrote in the letter that although the increased tuition may worry students who receive financial aid, the university’s “commitment to financial assistance remains strong.”
“As tuition increases, the financial aid budget increases,” Riley said. “BU is a very generous school in terms of financial aid. We’ve made it possible for a lot of students to attend BU who otherwise would not be able to.”
Average tuition at New England schools topped all U.S. regions at $28,386, compared to the $22,218 average rate of other schools, according to the Annual Survey of Colleges. Tuition prices should be compared based on a schools’ academic ranks, said Peter Altbach, a Boston College professor of higher education.
Boston College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University, all of which rank among America’s top 50 colleges in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2007 survey, had tuitions around $33,000 for the 2006-07 school year. BU’s tuition was $33,330.
“If you look at the top-tier schools, whether they are in New England or all over the country, the tuitions, in general, are within $500 of each other because they all like to have them about the same,” Altbach said. “Nobody wants to be at the top of the class in terms of being the most expensive.”
