University Park, Pa. -- Penn State will increase its base tuition by 6.6 percent for in-state students -- $306 per semester at University Park -- for the 2004-05 academic year, with slightly lower percentage increases applied at other campuses and for out-of-state students.
The tuition for out-of-state students, whose tuition is expected to cover the entire cost of education, will increase by 4.9 percent.
The University's Board of Trustees approved the new rate schedule at their regular meeting today (July 9) at the University Park campus.
"We have taken great care to keep tuition increases this year to the minimum amount needed to maintain the quality of a Penn State education," said University President Graham B. Spanier. "Maintaining a high quality educational experience for our students continues to be our highest priority."
This increase, required to offset inflationary pressures and rising costs specific to higher education, is Penn State's lowest percentage increase in recent years due to the 13th straight year of aggressive internal cost reductions and the end of three-straight years of state appropriation cuts.
The state appropriation of $317.2 million represents a 3 percent increase over last year and marks the end of a period during which the University received four significant cuts totaling nearly $44 million. The funding is three-quarters of a percentage point higher than the governor's proposed appropriation for Penn State, and this additional support is being used to offset a higher tuition increase.
Still, in the coming year state appropriations are only expected to represent 11.4 percent of the University's overall budget, as Penn State continues to rank last among all public universities in Pennsylvania and the Big Ten in the amount of funding received from the state per full-time equivalent student.
The approved increases for 2004-05 bring the base yearly tuition cost for continuing lower division students from Pennsylvania attending the University Park campus to $10,408.
The same category of students attending the Altoona, Berks, Erie and Harrisburg campuses will pay $9,582 in base tuition, while those students attending the Abington, Lehigh Valley, Schuylkill and Commonwealth College campuses will pay $9,180 in base tuition annually.
To meet the demand for information technology services, the mandatory information technology fee will be increased $15 per semester for all students. The student activity fee also will be raised -- by $4 per semester at University Park and $3 per semester at other locations. These funds will be made available for allocations by each campus' student activities fee committee.
A complete listing of Penn State's tuition rate schedules and fees may be accessed at http://www.tuition.psu.edu
Tuition supports more than one-third of Penn State's proposed $2.79 billion budget in 2004-05. Budget increases include funds for escalating health care and other insurance costs, facilities needs, provisions for modest faculty and staff salary increases and strategic academic program investments
The full Penn State budget may be accessed at http://www.budget.psu.edu
Last November, the Board of Trustees approved an average room and board cost of $6,230 for 2004-05 -- an increase of 4.88 percent or $290 per year for standard housing and the most common meal plan.
A large portion of this new revenue will go toward a $50 million life safety initiative that will install sprinklers and related code improvements in all Penn State residential units by 2010. Remaining funds will subsidize annual debt service, facilities renewal, deferred maintenance and the in-lieu-of tax agreement with State College Area School District.
In addition, Penn State expects to complete one of its most significant upgrades to housing facilities in recent years by this fall, with the centerpiece being the new Eastview Terrace undergraduate housing complex -- the first major addition to undergraduate housing at University Park since the mid-1980s.
In sum, the combined increases in tuition, fees and room and board will cost the average student 6 percent more for 2004-05 than was paid in the past year.