Students again will shell out more for their Butler University college experience next year.
The Board of Trustees voted to increase tuition 3.75 percent, room fees by 3.4 percent and board by 6.1 percent next year.
While it is lower than last year’s tuition increase of 4.6 percent, it is more than 2010’s 3.5 percent increase.
Tuition was $31,110 in 2011 and will total $32,280 in 2012.
Butler University President Jim Danko said it was his hope going into the Board of Trustees meeting to have the lowest percentage tuition increase in history and keep the hike less than 3 percent.
With the realities of the university budget, though, he said a that raise of 3 percent would have the university operating in the red.
“While this does not provide Butler with any additional discretionary resources to address a whole range of strategic opportunities—and in fact we have had to tighten our belts—I believe we’ve worked hard to keep our tuition increase quite reasonable,” Danko said in an email to The Collegian, “especially when you consider the fact that we continue to provide serious financial aid bringing the net tuition paid well below the posted price.”
Danko said that there are currently not other ways to cover those costs.
“A driving factor in our deliberations was the reality that until Butler University dramatically increases its endowment, we will remain highly tuition-dependent,” Danko said in an email to the Butler community.
Alex Bristol, a sophomore business major, said the raise may have been necessary, but it may be a burden to students.
“I understand it’s a hard time economically, and I’m sure how even Butler would be suffering in its own way, but it puts a lot more strain on students,” he said.
Addressing the 6.1 percent increase in board fees, Vice President for Student Affairs Levester Johnson said that students are actually going to be seeing more of those funds come back to them because of
an increase in flex dollars in the new meal plan and the addition of guest passes.
“The numbers actually come out a lot better,” Johnson said.
Danko said in the email to the Butler community that to mitigate these raises, the 2012–2013 budget will include nearly $50 million in student scholarships and grants,
which he said is $11 million more than when the economic downturn began four years ago.
