By Anne Baker and Derek Hawkins
Students will face a 5.8 percent tuition increase next year, a provision of the university’s 2009 budget that Jack McCarthy, senior vice president of administration and finance, and Provost Ahmed Abdelal announced to faculty and student leaders yesterday.
The increase will bring tuition from the current $15,750 to more than $16,600 per semester, or about $33,000 annually, following a trend in annual tuition increases among other colleges in Northeastern’s tier.
On-campus housing costs are also slated to rise five percent for rooming and four percent for board, McCarthy said.
Speaking before a session of the Faculty Senate in Raytheon Amphitheatre, McCarthy said other provisions of the budget, like an 11 percent increase in financial aid, would offset the rising cost of tuition. He added that Northeastern’s tuition hike is “well below” that of other comparable colleges like Boston University, George Washington University and American University.
“If I were a student and someone told me the cost of what I was now paying was going to go up I would be displeased,” he said in a later interview with The News. “I don’t think they’ll be shocked at the level when they see where everyone else comes out.” McCarthy said during the planning process the university was careful not to let economic factors like the falling value of the dollar, rising oil prices and the recent subprime mortgage crisis influence the budget. The result, McCarthy said, was a “much more involved, interactive process” that led to the budget being announced more than a month later than last year.
“We wanted to keep the powder dry for as long as possible so that we could test to see what other schools were doing with their tuition,” he said. “We did not want to go out into the market with an increase. As it turns out it’s a good thing we did because a lot of these economic conditions that occurred late in the game. If the economy had remained strong there might have been a higher tuition increase than there was.”
Last year, the university raised tuition 5.3 percent and pledged about $4 million to financial aid. With next year’s increase, nearly $16 million in financial aid should be distributed among students.
“Financial aid is the key,” said Philomena Mantella, senior vice president for enrollment, management and student life. “The bulk of the increase [in financial aid] is targeted at students with changing financial circumstances. It’s focused specifically on those who are retention risks, so it speaks directly to the issue.” Academic spending will make up 73 percent of the budget, up from 60 percent this year, boosting the Academic Initiative Plan, which aims to “help Northeastern penetrate forward further into the top 100” by improving its academic capabilities, McCarthy said.
Nearly $6.2 million of the academic budget will be allocated to new faculty hires, including hiring more assistant and associate professors, interdisciplanry professors and replacing classes taught by adjunct professors with those taught by full-time professors, Abdelal said. “It is also important to invest in the academic leadership, where you need to do so,” he said.
The new budget calls for the hiring of 40 to 50 new faculty members.
Last month, The News reported that Northeastern awarded at least 40 professors with tenure and tenure-track positions last fall. In the coming year, Abdelal said at the time, Northeastern will continue to hire a “significant number” of new professors.
Provisions in the budget include ordinary improvements, including more security cameras around campus and a $3 million dollar push for a “unified digital campus.” “The end game is to make a seamless system that deals with whatever your different needs are at the university,” McCarthy said of the push, which would simplify student life and also help to end the NU Shuffle. The budget also includes funding for renovations at the Fenway Center and Blackman Audition.
“There’s the arts-related, theatre-related, music-related, co-curricular-related interests that can be served there as well as clubs and organizations,” Mantella said of the Fenway Center.