Tuition swells yet again for undergraduates

By Margeux Clemmons     3/12/09 7:00pm

Rice University undergraduate tuition will increase by 4.9 percent, or $1,470, for the 2009-2010 academic year, reaching $31,430, and Housing and Dining fees will increase 4.5 percent, or $480, to total $11,230, President David Leebron announced at the Student Association's Rice Financial Forum Wednesday night. Rice's percentage increase of undergraduate tuition is the same as the increases at Washington University, Vanderbilt University and Cornell University, but one percentage point or more higher than the changes at Princeton University, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to Vice President for Finance Kathy Collins' survey of undergraduate tuition changes at schools in the Association of American Universities. However, Collins highlighted Rice's financial aid packages as a difference between Rice and other universities.

"We're at the high end of dollar increases," Collins said. "We're not the highest, and we're still $7,000 below peer institutions in terms of the price before financial aid."

The percentage increase is the lowest in tuition since a four percent increase in the 2001-'02 fiscal year, Collins said.

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She added that the financial aid budget will also be adjusted based on the needs of 2009's incoming class.

"The financial aid budget is going to increase substantially for a couple reasons," Collins said. "One is that Rice has a preface of each year adjusting financial aid based on family circumstances, so as the price goes up and the family's ability to pay the increase stays flat or declines, Rice makes up the difference. Also, I think we expect that given the financial circumstances and high unemployment, that we'll just have more financial aid cost. And we're not changing the need-blind admissions policy."

Additional changes in cost for students will include a 4.9 percent increase for masters students in engineering, a 2.5 percent increase for professional masters students in natural sciences and for music and architecture graduate students and a 4 percent increase for all liberal studies masters programs. Tuition for Rice MBA students will increase at different rates depending on the program, with tuition for current students going up 4.2 percent and the Professionals and Executive MBA programs' tuitions increasing by 5.5 percent.

During Wednesday's forum, Leebron also outlined the financial state of the university, describing the administration's plans for spending according to three possible projections of which way the economy will turn in the near future.

Additionally, he reported that the endowment, from which Rice draws 45 percent of its operating budget, is currently down by 20 percent and added that other schools who depend heavily on endowment for funding are suffering greater losses.

"Harvard lost two and a half to three times the size of the Rice endowment," Leebron said. "They are taking very drastic measures, even stopping construction projects. As I like to put it, 20 percent down is the new up."

Leebron outlined several actions the university has undertaken to curb costs, the largest of which is a 5 percent reduction of most departmental budgets, although faculty salaries were off-limits for cuts. Efforts to save money also included the temporary hiring freeze that took place from Dec. 3 through Jan. 31, a 1 percent reduction in supplies and equipments budget and smaller projects like double-sided printing.

Collins said that Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman had related to her that part of the Dean's office budget cuts would include canceling the subscriptions to newspapers and magazines in the college and effecting changes to the college course program.

Finding ways to save money while still focusing on the university's mission and commitments for the future is still the goal, Leebron said.

"Unlike businesses, [Rice] takes the notion of community more seriously," he said. "I can't promise that there won't be layoffs, but we are going to try our best to make other cuts first. Every time you save $60,000, it's a job. In this environment, it is more than just a question of saving a job here; it's a question of whether someone will have a job at all."

Will Rice College sophomore Dillon Miles said that although he was initially against the tuition raises because he did not want to pay more money, he also understood the necessity of the increase and budget reductions.

"I'll be interested to know, if the economy gets worse, how they are going to cope with that - if it's going to be more cuts or more tuition raises," Miles said.

Student Association External Vice President Nick Muscara also said that he was grateful for the transparency the forum provided and hoped there would be less student skepticism about the administration's thoughtfulness on responding to the financial situation.

The forum concluded with a discussion of the pending decision concerning the acquisition of Baylor College of Medicine. Leebron listed advantages of the relationship, including the improvement of Rice's ranking on the list of amount of research funding increasing from 129 to 20. Ultimately, he said, the decision would be left to the 25-member Board of Trustees.

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