No news is often good news.
For the first time in at least eight years, Boston University students and their families did not receive a letter in late December from the Board of Trustees about tuition increases for the next academic year.
But don’t get your hopes up. BU officials say the lack of a letter does not mean tuition will stay the same for 2004-2005. Students should receive the yearly mailing sometime in late February or early March, President ad interim Aram Chobanian said Friday.
According to one trustee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the Trustees did discuss tuition increases at their annual full board meeting Jan. 8 but did not come to a resolution on the issue. The board member said the increase will most likely be somewhere around 5 percent, meaning tuition could increase from $27,042 to around $28,500.
A 5 percent hike on both tuition and room and board would push total costs – including the Undergraduate Student Fee and other expenses – to $39,700.
The trustee said the board did not want the increase to go higher than the 5 percent range, where they have been since the 1997-1998 academic year increases.
Chobanian said Friday that the reason students did not receive the tuition increase letter was because the board was busy dealing with “changes” to BU in the fall.
“With all the changes that were going on with the university, it slowed the process up,” he said. “We wanted to carefully check our priorities and what our expenses were going to be before we made a commitment. We just haven’t come up with the final numbers yet and that’s why it wasn’t announced.
“We’re going to do the best we can to keep tuition rates as low as possible,” he added.
BU spokesman Colin Riley said BU is usually one of the first universities to make announcements about tuition increases. But Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences freshman Christina Quan said sending the announcements to parents and students in February will be better than in December because it will not interfere with the holidays.
In general, Quan said she thinks the total cost of attending BU is unreasonable, especially in terms of room and board.
“I think it is outrageous,” she said. “The quality of some things isn’t up to par for what we spend here. Although the education is adequate enough for what we pay for, other things like food and dorms could be better.”
But Peter Dreifuss, father of College of Arts and Sciences freshman Rebecca Dreifuss, said he thinks BU is adequately priced for its location.
“I think at BU you would kind of expect it to cost more because the cost of living in Boston is one of the more expensive in the country,” he said.
He also said he will not be upset about the tuition increase when he is notified about it.
“Tuition costs do go up – it doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “I guess I anticipate it, it doesn’t make it any easier but I’m not angry about it.”
Dreifuss, who also sent a child to Duke University, said he does not mind the almost $40,000 a year cost at BU because the university does not ask for donations on top of the tuition costs as much as Duke does. He constantly got mailings asking for donations from Duke, he said.
Over the past decade, tuition increases have been between 4 and 5 percent each year. The largest recent increase was for the 1997-1998 academic year, when it was nearly 7 percent. Total costs, including tuition and room and board, passed $30,000 in 1998.
Staff writer Joshua Karlin-Resnick contributed to this report.
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