Butler University recently announced its tuition will rise for the next academic year.
An email stated that administration decided on a 3.75 percent increase from this year’s tuition.
Nationally, tuition at four-year institutions rose by 4.5 percent for the 2011-12 school year.
Forbes reports suggest Butler’s tuition has been managed similarly.
This is the most recent year that data displaying national average increases is available.
Since the financial crash in 2008, private university tuition rose slower than at public universities across the country.
This trend was not enough to close the gap. Most private institutions are more expensive than public universities.
Butler is no exception to this trend.
The university is still more expensive to attend than the average public university.
At Butler, however, tuition has risen faster than even the national average for the last several years.
Reports have not confirmed how this year’s increase compares to the national scene.
However, Butler also increased the amount of money going toward financial aid and grants by $15 million for the next academic year.
This increase will actually cost the university more dollars than the increase in tuition alone will bring in if the student body remains the same size.
This is a step in the right direction for Butler.
Butler is not the only school with tuition on the rise. Rising tuition costs around the country worry some activists.
Organizations like Project Student Debt and Strike Debt both argue that rising student debt puts at risk the lives we expected growing up.
Unemployment and under-employment both are high.
Some projections say this will remain the case until 2020.
The long-term effects of this may be that higher education becomes more exclusive and that a bachelor’s degree becomes a liability instead of a blessing.
Butler officials, by increasing financial aid at their university, are honoring the heritage of their founder.
Ovid Butler founded this institution on the belief that those who society deems less valuable are still human and deserve the same opportunities and rights as everyone else.
The administration has stated it wants to expand quite a bit in the coming years, both in the student body and facilities.
At the same time, the university is making efforts to ease the burden on students.
This is a trend to which Butler should commit.