<p>Budget</a> crunch has UD looking for cutbacks | The News Journal | delawareonline.com</p>
<p>The article hints towards a current trend in universities -carefully looking at the costs of each department vs. the number of students served and other revenues generated, and cutting back on the non-technological programs that have the highest net cost per student.</p>
<p>The article also discloses the University’s new thinking on tuition. Here are interesting excerpts from the article:</p>
<p>“For this year’s seniors, the cost of a UD education is 30 percent more per year than when they were freshmen.”
“Harker’s speech to faculty suggested that future tuition increases at UD will be more modest, a new attitude toward how much it charges students. In the past five years, in-state tuition and fees have increased $3,452, while out-of-state costs rose more than $9,000. As recently as a year ago, UD said in a report to bond investors it expected to continue boosting tuition revenue.”
“Since then, skyrocketing tuition entered the political spotlight, with President Barack Obama calling out colleges in his recent State of the Union address. The president wants to back his critique with new policies that reward schools that contain costs with more federal aid and take away funding from those that increase tuition too much.”
““We’re being seen as the big, greedy, fat cats,” Harker said.”
“He made it clear the administration and the board of trustees have shifted their thinking on tuition and fees, and the sizable hikes of the past several years won’t continue.”
““We have to give students and families a break,” Harker said.”
“At $18,450 in 2006-07, UD charged out-of-state students much less than its regional competitors, giving it a good incentive to raise prices, said John Cheslock, an associate professor at Penn State University who studies the economics of higher education. With out-of-state rates now at $27,462, UD now exceeds similar public schools in the mid-Atlantic, making more big tuition increases less feasible.”
““You start reaching the point where there’s diminishing returns to increasing tuition,” Cheslock said. “If your tuition gets to a certain point, you start to drive students away.””</p>
<p>Perhaps University officials read our thread, “Stop the disproportional increases”?: </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-delaware/1281247-stop-disproportional-increases.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-delaware/1281247-stop-disproportional-increases.html</a></p>
<p>Now that we are about one month away from learning the 2012/2013 tuition rates, I thought it might be useful to recall the article cited above. The tuition and fees increase for out of state students for the 2011/2012 year was a little over $2,000, or 8 percent.</p>
<p>My “wild stab” guess would be 3.5% increase for OOS students. That way UD could say that they cut tuition/fees increases by over 50% (looks good to the public and Obama). So figure on about a thousand more. We shall see.</p>