College Expects Tuition Increase

The cost of attending Houghton next year is set to increase by three percent, bringing the total to approximately $36,660. According to David Smith, vice president of finance, the decision to raise tuition is a “board/trustee level decision” and what the trustees recommended was a three percent increase of room, board, and tuition. Data obtained from past Houghton College catalogs reveals that tuition has increased approximately 46% since the 2000-2001 school year.

However, it is not only Houghton making these changes—colleges across the nation are raising tuition. According to President Mullen, data compiled by Dale Wright, Houghton’s chief business officer, reveals that out of a group of seventy-five Christian colleges and universities, “only five have a lower tuition increase over the last three years… Our three-year change in the cost of attendance has been between 8-9% and the average was 13.8%.” Smith commented on the increase in comparison to similar Christian schools, saying  that “although we’ve gone up, more than I would like, we’ve certainly gone up a lot less than our competition.”

There are multiple reasons behind the tuition increase. According to President Mullen, the main reason is that “the basic costs of doing operations in a college go up every year,” such as increases in utilities costs, increases in healthcare costs, increases in local taxes, and “Sodexo costs [also] go up every year.” Another reason for the tuition increase is “step increases for faculty… so that means that every year, even if you have the exact same number of faculty, you have slight increase in everyone’s salary.” Another factor leading to the decision to increase tuition is the New York state-mandated minimum wage increase. Smith stated that the college does hire a lot of students as workers and their labor costs alone are a “non-trivial expense.”

A final, slightly less well known cost Houghton has invested in over the last several years is putting more money from the operations into “improving the physical plant,” Mullen said. “We have beautiful buildings, but many of them are older. And it’s only fairly recently that we’ve tried to have an institutional facilities renewal policy.” Referred to in higher education as deferred maintenance, Mullen gave the example of Gillette Hall, which had a water main break earlier this semester, as being an example of a concern. Deferred maintenance is “not something that any individual student is going to see a drastic change in. But it’s the kind of thing we have to do,” Mullen said. Smith also described deferred maintenance as “something we’re really having to focus on.”

The alternative to tuition increases is cutting costs, which Houghton has experienced quite a bit of over the past few years. Smith stated that the two largest costs on Houghton’s budget are the college’s commitment to four-year financial aid for students, followed by the salaries of faculty. Mullen stated that the challenge to cutting costs as a strategy for lowering costs is that “every cost we cut hurts students in some way… I would say we’re still going to be trying to look at that, because that’s the other way”. Mullen also offered the suggestion that it might be “interesting to have students weigh in on that at some point… our dominant perspective on any of our conversations is not to hurt student experience; but when you have administrators thinking this way, it may not be the same as what students would say”.

At a time when our enrollment is a concern to all on campus—faculty, students, and staff alike—will the tuition increase have an effect on incoming students? Houghton’s recent joining of the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) will probably keep that from happening. Smith described the LRAP as a kind of insurance program, featuring a sliding scale of reimbursement from the foundation to future Houghton graduates who are working in the United States, ranging from full reimbursement of loans for those making less than $20,000, and decreasing gradually until the cut-off point at $38,000. Smith described it as a “safety net to help you have the debt not be a burden on you.”

Throughout the interview, Mullen emphasized that “I wish we didn’t have to raise the tuition every year because I know that it falls most heavily on returning students… we’re not casual about this.” Smith similarly emphasized that all of the business decisions at the college are made with the good of students as the first and primary concern.