For the 2011-12 school year, students may have noticed the cost of tuition has increased. However, the university has restrained the growth to just 5.14 percent.
According to Ferris President David Eisler, Ferris State University had the third lowest increase in the state.
“The vast majority of institutions have increased their tuition by seven percent and it now appears that Michigan State and Wayne State University have increased theirs by more than that, almost nine percent,” Eisler said.
With college being such a necessity for students’ futures, an affordable education is a must. Because tuition rates were set to increase, the university took careful planning procedures to balance out the rise in prices while remaining affordable.
“I think with all students we see that increasingly, tuition is an issue in terms of paying for school. Students are working a lot of hours in order to afford to go to college,” Dan Burcham, vice president of Student Affairs, said. “However, when we put out our new financial aid packaging, we accounted for the 5.14 percent increase in terms of putting those packages together. We knew it was going to go up and we adjusted our financial aid accordingly.”
Although the tuition is higher priced for students, the university has had to take some steps as well due to state budget cuts.
Ferris is receiving the least amount of support from the state since 1992, according to Eisler. The university’s budget has been cut by almost eight million dollars.
“Everyone has to work harder; we have fewer people doing more. We have to do well in terms of recruitment and we are doing that with fewer people,” Burcham said. “Another thing we have to do well with is our instruction and the good thing is that we have excellent professors and we are still continuing to grow, which allows us then to be able to pay our bills in a way that is pretty efficient.”
Through the tuition increase, as well as the state budget reduction, Eisler keeps one goal in mind: keep the costs down as much as possible while working hard to keep Ferris’ students education valuable. n