The board of trustees voted to raise tuition to $30,000 a year for the 2010-11 school year, a 6.2 percent increase over the tuition in 2009-2010 and about a 30 percent cost increase during the past four years. During the 2006-07 school year students paid $22,980.
Chancellor Victor Boschini said the 6.2 percent increase will go to increasing financial aid and the number of professors on campus. The board also voted to increase financial aid by the same percentage, according to a campuswide e-mail sent by Boschini.
“I always agonize over this tuition decision; it’s always hard,” Boschini said. “I know people don’t believe that, but it really is not easy to do, and I’m the one who gets the complaints about it, and so we really think through it carefully.”
Junior neuroscience major Boah Chung said the tuition increase could cause her to worry about whether she could come back from semester to semester.
“It’s a little ridiculous because I already thought it was expensive,” Chung said. “It’s a little frustrating because I came in with the impression that I’d be paying $26,000 and now I’m paying $30,000.”
Boschini said he did not think the increase would scare away prospective students with applications already up 15 percent from this time a year ago.
“With everything that is going on on campus right now there is just good buzz, or whatever you want to call it, about TCU,” he said. “I’m hoping that families feel they get what they pay for, but of course we won’t know that until next fall.”
Boschini said he and the board of trustees take a number of factors into consideration when deciding how much to increase tuition. A major factor is the budget that each department puts together for the upcoming school year. However, those requests are not always met because of the exceptionally high monetary numbers involved, he said.
For example, if the budget requests for each department were met this year the increase would have been 11 percent, he said.
As far as competing with comparable universities in the state like Southern Methodist University and Baylor University, Boschini said he was aware of the tuition at the schools, but tries not to allow it to play a factor in his decision making.
Tuition at SMU for the 2009-10 academic year is $31,200 per year. At Baylor, the tuition price tag for the current academic year is $25,320.
Boschini showed an awareness that students could be unhappy with the increase, as he invited them to his office to talk it over.
“Anyone who does have an issue with it, tell them to call my office and make an appointment to come in, and I guarantee I’ll get them hooked up with financial aid (if their FAFSA verifies that they need it),” Boschini said. “We try to help every student who needs help, because it’s in my best interest to keep (students) at TCU.”
According to the e-mail, the university anticipated it would offer $62 million in scholarship money to undergraduate students.
Year/ Tuition
2006-07/ $22,980
2007-08/ $24,820
2008-09/ $26,900
2009-2010/ $28,250
2010-2011/ $30,000
