The Missouri State University Board of Governors voted at its April 1 meeting to increase student tuition across the board for the 2011-12 school year.
“Missouri State University has been and continues to be committed to providing an outstanding education at an affordable price,” MSU President James Cofer said in a news release. “Missouri has been fortunate to see lower reductions to higher education funding than other states.
"Despite that, we have worked very hard not to shift too much of the burden to students, which would decrease both access and affordability.”
Last year, the MSU Board of Governors approved a $5 increase for in-state undergraduate students, which was held during the 2010-11 school year and will instead be reflected in the 2011-12 school year. The tuition increases approved April 1 include that $5 increase.
Increases enacted April 1:
- Undergraduate tuition for in-state students will increase by $8, or 4 percent, to $194 per credit hour. Average tuition will increase to $6,410 per year, up from $6,276.
- Undergraduate tuition for out-of-state students will increase by $16, or 4 percent, to $388 per credit hour.
- Tuition for in-state graduate students will increase by $3, or 1.3 percent, to $227 per credit hour, and out-of-state graduate students will see a 6.1 percent rise to $454 per credit hour, a $26 per credit hour increase.
- The same rate increases will apply for students using BearNet instruction, a live classroom-to-classroom audio-video connection, at BearNet location courses other than Springfield.
- Several graduate courses for in-state students in the MSU College of Business Administration will increase to $259 per credit hour from $256 per credit hour, and to $486 per credit hour from $460 per credit hour for out-of-state students.
- Several graduate programs in the MSU College of Health and Human services also will see an increase; for in-state graduate students, there will be an increase of $3 to $252 per credit hour, while out-of-state graduate students will see an increase of $26 to $479 per credit hour.
- Room and board costs will increase by an average of 4.66 percent, depending on the type of residence and selected food plan.
- Greenwood Laboratory School's 2011-12 tuition will increase to $4,717 for grades K-8, a $267 uptick, while tuition for grades 9-12 will be $4,806.
For both the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years, four-year public universities agreed to freeze tuition with the promise that state funding would stay at 95 percent of the current fiscal year's appropriation, according to Gov. Jay Nixon's
Web site. In his proposed budget for fiscal 2012 - which begins in July - Nixon dropped higher education funding to $1.11 billion, down from $1.23 billion in fiscal 2011. Missouri's 2012 budget is now undergoing the approval process by the state legislature - it met first-round approval March 29 in the Missouri House, according to
Bloomberg.com.
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