YSU Trustees Adopt Smaller Budget for FY 2014
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- The trustees of Youngstown State University adopted a budget of $177.2 million for fiscal 2014 Wednesday, $1.5 million less than this year’s budget and $3.8 million less than the fiscal 2012 budget.
Seven trustees also voted to raise tuition yet again to $7,900 a year, or $3,950 per semester for residents of Ohio. That’s a 2.4% increase, or $94 per student per semester.
To the anger of the editorial staff of The Jambar, the student newspaper, trustees also imposed what they call a “transportation fee” of $115 per semester this fall and next spring and of $58 this summer semester, regardless of whether a student enrolled for a minimum of six hours parks on a campus parking lot, walks to school or uses public transportation.
The university says the fee is to fund a shuttle service for students and allow it to reserve funds to one day replace the parking deck on Lincoln Avenue.
The one dissenting vote to raise tuition came from Harry Meshel. (James B. Green was absent.)
“I’ve not seen any effort on a regular basis to cuts the costs of running the university,” Meshel said afterward. “We’ve got to get back to looking at how we can reduce expenses. We haven’t been serious about this. … I’ve been observing this for the past six years.”
In a prepared statement, the chairman of the trustees, Sudershan Garg, said, “We have carefully crafted a budget that allows us to invest in world-class programs that help ensure the continued success of our students while also streamlining and developing greater efficiencies in our operations.”
Even with the hike in tuition, the university noted, its students pay the lowest tuition among the 11 public comprehensive universities in Ohio. YSU tuition is $2,158 below the average at state universities.
YSU has introduced an “Affordable Tuition Advantage” program to take some of the sting out of the tuition increases. Up to now, the program affected only eight counties in western Pennsylvania. That number has been expanded to 16 plus four counties in West Virginia and Chautauqua County, N.Y. “Tuition for students [residing] in these counties will be $4.070 per semester only $120 more than in-state tuition,” a university spokesman said. “Undergraduate for students outside Ohio and outside the counties in the Affordable Tuition program will be $6,950 per semester.”
Graduate students will see their tuition bills go up 3%, or $154 a semester, the university said, to $5,283 for residents of Ohio and 3.2%, or $169, for out-of-state residents who will pay $5,403 per term.
State support of YSU operation in 2014 won’t decrease for the first time in three years, YSU noted, after experiencing a decrease of $1.1 million this year and down $7 million in fiscal 2012.
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Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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