College of Arts and Sciences submits revised Differential Tuition Request
Posted: November 1, 2017
Following over a month of presentations and Q&A sessions with students in departments across the College of Arts and Sciences, together with thorough analysis of an online student survey completed by more than 750 students, the College is submitting two revised requests for differential tuition to the Provost on Wednesday, November 1, 2017. The undergraduate and graduate student survey responses are available below.
In response to student concerns regarding affordability, the undergraduate request now proposes a differential tuition of $10 per student credit hour. The College commits to directing revenues toward offering students more courses to ensure speedier progress toward graduation, retaining high-quality faculty, and making certain excellent student support services are available to College majors.
The College has also revised its graduate differential tuition request substantially. The requested charge per course credit hour has been lowered to $50, and students taking dissertation hours will have a flat charge of $100 (regardless of the number of hours taken). Students receiving support through GA-, RA- and TA-ships will see no increase in their out-of-pocket costs. All revenue raised by the differential tuition will go to support graduate students financially in the form of more scholarships, larger scholarships, and longer-term scholarships.
A report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in August 2017 shows that increasing spending on student support and educational quality has a far greater impact on enrollment and graduation rates than equivalent cuts in costs. As faculty and student in the College already know, cutting costs has the greatest negative impact on educational quality within academic units such as the College of Arts and Sciences.
Both requests for differential tuition in the College of Arts & Sciences retain the previous commitments to zero allocations of revenues to administration and operations, and to annual reporting of its differential tuition budget. In addition, the College remains committed to consulting with students regarding that budget and all future allocation decisions.
