NEWPORT -- Trustees for the Arkansas State University System approved increases in tuition for all four of the system's institutions Friday.
Tuition and mandatory fees at ASU-Jonesboro -- the state's second largest four-year university with 13,552 students in the 2013-14 school year -- will rise 2.8 percent for in-state students taking 30 credit hours, from $7,510 to $7,720 in the 2014-15 school year.
Included in the increase will be a $2 rise in the mandatory "academic excellence" fee, which will now be $6 per credit hour, to help fund a 2 percent merit salary increase for faculty members, a news release noted. The average additional cost to full-time students will be $105 per semester, it said.
ASU System President Charles Welch said the increases were due to rising operating costs and fairly flat state funding.
"When you receive no additional state funding and yet you have increases in utilities and you have increases in health-care costs and you want to provide a pay increase for your employees, it makes it almost impossible to have no increase," he said.
Welch said the board has been raising faculty salaries for three years so that ASU schools will meet the average salary for faculty members among their peer institutions in the Southern Regional Education Board. The Southern Regional Education Board is an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization that works to improve education in 16 states including Arkansas.
"We felt like it was very important that we try to get our faculty on par so that we're able to attract and retain the best faculty possible," Welch said.
Len Frey, vice chancellor for finance and administration at ASU-Jonesboro, attributed the Jonesboro rate increase to a rise in health-care costs, as well.
"We absorbed over half a million dollars in increased health-care costs this year," he said.
At ASU-Newport, in-state tuition will go up 2.3 percent, from $2,640 to $2,700 per year.
Adam Adair, vice chancellor for fiscal affairs at the Newport campus, said the increase is necessary to keep up with the cost of meeting students' needs.
"We want to be affordable for them, but we also want to provide them the support services they need," he said.
He said Newport is still in the middle or bottom half of similar institutions in the state in terms of cost of attendance.
Kaitlyn Riggin, president of ASU-Newport's Student Government Association, said she chose the school for its low cost of attendance. She said she does not think the increased tuition will prevent others from enrolling in the school, however.
"They may have raised tuition but it is one of the lowest-cost colleges in this area," she said. "That's a lot of the reason people come to ASU-Newport."
Adair said the school has also suffered from a lack of funding from the state. While ASU-Newport has gained more students in the past few years, its funding from the state has remained largely the same.
Tuition at ASU-Mountain Home will go up 2.3 percent for in-state students, from $2,610 to $2,670 per year.
Arkansas State University-Beebe faces the largest increase. In-state tuition will rise from $2,640 to $2,790 per year, a 5.7 percent jump.
Riggin said the larger increases at schools like ASU-Beebe might make it harder for some Arkansas students to pursue higher education.
"It definitely makes it a little bit more difficult for students who do have to receive financial aid to go to school," she said. "Living expenses and everything else is also inflating."
Metro on 05/17/2014