Boston University sees the same thing every winter: The Charles freezing, the Terriers winning the Beanpot and officials tacking an extra two grand onto the cost of tuition, room and board.
There was no reason to expect anything different this time around. The university even managed to keep the increase to a mere 4.72 percent, well below last year’s hike of 5.9 percent, which matched the national average.
But BU’s tuition is much higher than most schools to begin with, ranking as the 45th-most expensive four-year private school in the country in 2006-07, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. BU students pay more than their counterparts at Harvard, Cornell, Yale and other Ivy League schools.
Compare that with BU’s U.S. News and World Report ranking — a dismal 57th — and that price tag starts to look pretty high.
While BU is famously generous with its financial aid, ballooning tuition costs are a growing burden on middle-class families. Seniors paid $8,000 more for tuition, room and board this year than when they first started writing checks to the university four years ago. At this rate, today’s freshmen will eventually pay more than $50,000 a year for tuition, room and board before they graduate.
Many scholarships also don’t keep pace with tuition hikes, meaning students who choose to go to BU because of a hefty aid award may find themselves paying more than they’d anticipated — or can afford.
Room and board is a growing burden as well. The cheapest package is now just under $11,000 for nine months, or just under $1,200 a month — well above the going rate for a room in Allston-Brighton, even accounting for the cost of food.
University officials have said they hope to bring 85 percent of the student body on campus with the completion of Student Village 2. On-campus housing has its benefits, mitigating the university’s impact on the local housing market and fostering a campus community, but without competitive on-campus rates, students will seek cheaper housing in Brookline and Allston-Brighton.
For the sake of its students, BU must begin to reign in its annual tuition hikes.
To be sure, BU doesn’t have the luxury of paying the bills with the help of billion-dollar endowments like those of the Ivy League. Princeton, with its $13 billion endowment, didn’t raise its tuition a cent this year. But BU, with a relatively small endowment of $916 million, can’t afford that luxury.
BU is — as we are reminded each year — a “tuition-dependent” institution.
But the university should aspire to be more, to be an institution built on solid financial investments, not an annual assault on student’s financial well-being.
BU needs to let its endowment — which grew by 17.9 percent last year — catch up with its growing tuition. While proposed capital improvements are sorely needed, they could be delayed or reduced in scope. Likewise, the university could scale back proposed funding for student activities.
While officials focus on capital improvements they hope will draw more and better applicants, they are missing the reality of modern education: that affordable tuition is just as important for most applicants as well-maintained facilities. BU must strike a balance if it is to keep from losing students who seek a better bargain at other universities.
Finally, BU must invest in its current students if it hopes to earn their support as alumni. But right now, few students feel they will owe BU anything after they graduate. At $46,000 a year, they rightly feel they’ve aleady paid their dues to the university.
Students must demand an end to the kind of hikes they’ve tolerated in the past. The university will always find students willing to pay exorbitant prices for a BU education, so there is little economic pressure to slow the hikes. The only pressure can come from student protest.