Purdue takes steps to ease
effects of tuition hike
By Laura Pelner
Campus
Editor
In an effort to
keep this year's 7.5 percent tuition increase as low as possible, Purdue
officials did some internal budget cutting and reallocated funds to
lessen the impact.
"We always hear
about downsizing in the corporate world; that's true at Purdue also,"
said James David, director of budget and fiscal planning. "That's kind
of an important factor, that we did have to reallocate about 1.7 percent
of our existing West Lafayette budget to fund these cost increases."
David said the reallocations
were targeted and done in a way to protect the instructional parts of
the budget. "I think that's kind of the key," he said. "In this reallocation
we're very careful to protect the instructional budget."
He said in order
to do that the University cut back on supply and expense budgets and
left some vacant positions open. David said no one was fired, however.
"It was done very
carefully, in a way that we weren't getting rid of faculty members,"
he said.
He added President
Martin Jischke was adamant about that - maintaining the "instructional
quality" of Purdue.
Even with this restructuring
of funds the University faces its highest tuition hike in nine years.
The 7.5 percent increase affects both in- and out-of-state students
alike - in-state fees increased $292 a year and out-of-state fees increased
$968 a year.
That translates
into a total tuition bill of $4,164 a year for Indiana residents and
$13,872 a year for all other students.
"The reason student
fee increases are higher than we like to expect is because it's a national
phenomenon," Davis said. "It's driven by the economies and inability
of the states to provide money. It's simply not there."
This year Purdue
received less state appropriations than usual, as did Indiana University.
In fact, coincidentally, IU's tuition also increased by 7.5 percent.
"I think the important
point here, I think there's a realization across the country that the
state governments weren't able to help as much as they could," said
Davis.
Among Big Ten universities,
Purdue is still eighth in terms of fee rates, even after this increase,
Davis said. Other schools in the Big Ten suffered big increases too;
for example, Ohio State's fees increased 9.3 percent this year.
Purdue's enrollment
was not affected by the tuition increase. Doug Christiansen, assistant
vice president for enrollment services and director of admissions and
records, said the University hasn't felt any repercussions in enrollment.
"We've not had really
any negative press about it," said Christiansen. "I think people understand
with the state doing everything they can for the institution. They value
the degree."
New applications
to Purdue actually increased 7 percent this year. Christiansen said
21,741 would-be beginning students applied just for this fall semester,
which is about 5,000 more applications than Purdue received five years
ago and 6,000 more than six years ago.
"We've had a high
demand even when the word of the fee increase was out there," Christiansen
said. "We didn't have a lot of people cancel either."
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