The University of Massachusetts has taken a step toward hiking tuition and room and board charges for next academic year, but some trustees said Wednesday the proposed increases are not high enough and one said the status quo would be equivalent to “running the institution into the ground.”
The UMass Board of Trustees Committee on Administration and Finance voted unanimously Wednesday morning to increase tuition for in-state undergraduates by 2.5% for the 2024-2025 academic year to $17,006, adding $415 to the bill of a student at the flagship Amherst campus, and slightly less at the Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses.
The full board is scheduled to vote to confirm the tuition and fee increases next Wednesday.
Last year, the board also approved a 2.5% increase for the 2023-2024 academic year.
Out-of-state undergraduates at the Amherst campus are facing a 3% increase in tuition, a $1,156 adjustment to $39,693. The system’s three other undergraduate campuses will implement a 2.5% increase for out-of-state students.
Graduate students at Amherst, Boston and Lowell campuses will see a 2.5% rise in their tuition, while the committee voted to raise Dartmouth’s tuition for graduate students only 1%.
Room and board costs are also rising. Students at the Amherst campus will see a 4.5% increase, to $16,128, and the Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses will have room and board fees increase by 2.3, 3.6 and 3.7% respectively.
The net revenue from the tuition and fee adjustments is projected to be $10 million, according to UMass, “only partially offsetting projected expense increases related to wage, health insurance, financial aid, and student support cost increases.”
UMass says that its efforts to centralize procurement and other administrative functions has saved $120 million over the last few years, “contributing to its ability to hold tuition adjustments below inflation.”
But some trustees said Wednesday that continuing to hold tuition increases below the rate of inflation is not sustainable and they argued for increases in the 3.5 to 4% range instead.
“What I’m going to talk about is about a $10 million increase in revenue in light of the atmosphere of the following: There is no more money coming out of the State House for the next two years, from what I hear, due to the immigration problem. Number two, you are in the environment of $90,000 private education,” Trustee Bob Epstein said. He added, “We’ve got to catch up. And if we keep going, take the CPI against our rising costs, eventually you’re going to be faced with even tougher financial challenges ahead.”
Epstein said he expects that, no matter what amount the board raises tuition by, “there’ll be an article in the Globe, an article maybe in the Herald, about how bad we are” and that “we might as well get it over with, you might as well get a number that we need.”
Trustee Charles Wu said he agreed. He said UMass is “behind the eight ball and we’re on the treadmill,” and should be prepared for either “student protests who are unhappy with the tuition increase, or faculty or program cuts that we’re going to have to do.”
“So I think it is incumbent on the board to think about — and I agree that it’s a wonderful goal and ideal to keep this very affordable. But I think a 3% or more increase is not unreasonable. I haven’t done the numbers the way Bob did, but just the numbers don’t add up,” Wu said. “Going back to my first question of one and a half percent increases against four and a half percent inflation, we’re just going to be running the institution into the ground.”
UMass President Marty Meehan, who has been warning of impending financial headwinds for the university system for at least a year, said that the topic of how tuition rates factor into the system’s overall fiscal picture is ripe for further discussion.
“Obviously, this proposal is what the chancellors and I, what we felt was the right number. But I’m certainly not going to disagree with the perspectives of the two trustees. And it is a very reasonable — look, as long as we provide financial aid, I don’t think that our sticker cost is too high at all. In fact, I worry sometimes that students don’t come to UMass because the sticker price is so low, they worry that maybe it’s not as good as someplace else,” Meehan said.