By Lisa Powers and Annemarie Mountz, Penn State
CENTER VALLEY – Penn State’s Board of Trustees approved a composite tuition increase of 3.8 percent for undergraduate students for the 2011-12 academic year at their meeting July 15 at Penn State Lehigh Valley.
“Two-thirds of our undergraduate students will see increases of between 2.9 percent and 3.5 percent,” said Penn State President Graham B. Spanier. “As we said from the beginning, we are determined that our students and their families will not bear the full burden of the appropriation cuts.”
Tuition for lower division Pennsylvania resident and non-resident students at Commonwealth campuses will increase by 2.9 percent. Tuition for lower division non-resident students at University Park will increase by 3.5 percent, and resident students at University Park will see an increase of 4.9 percent.
Translated into dollars, in-state lower-division students will see a tuition increase per semester of $356 at University Park and $175 at most of the Commonwealth campuses. Non-resident lower-division students will see a tuition increase per semester of $465 at University Park and $267 at most of the Commonwealth campuses.
To offset the recently announced $68 million cut in the University’s state appropriation, Penn State has been implementing both across-the-board and targeted cuts through the efforts of the Core Council and elsewhere, seeking efficiencies while maintaining the quality of a Penn State education. Over the past three months, those cuts and internal savings have totaled nearly $30 million.
The University generated additional savings through changes to health care benefits, energy savings, cuts to funding for capital improvements, savings on property and liability insurance and cut backs on funds aimed at new programs. The elimination of a salary increase for faculty and staff this summer also generated significant savings, as did a targeted early-retirement offering, and academic program cuts, consolidations and mergers recommended by the Core Council, a group charged with identifying millions of dollars in savings since 2010.
“This certainly has been a challenging year,” Spanier said. “We understand that even a moderate tuition increase has an impact on our students and their families. The cost-cutting measures we’re taking involve significant sacrifice on the part of the University community as a whole, but they’re being done with the goal of allowing students to continue to pursue a Penn State education.”
The Information Technology Fee will increase $4 per semester for full-time undergraduate students, from $236 to $240. The Student Activity Fee will increase between $3 and $4 for full-time undergraduate students at most campuses, and the facilities fee will increase between $2 and $4 for full-time undergraduate students at most campuses. A complete listing of Penn State’s tuition rate schedules and fees may be accessed at http://www.tuition.psu.edu online.