Tuition freeze helps students

By: Jenna Rice

Posted: 3/27/09

Jenna Rice

Staff Writer

As current economic conditions have made budgeting more difficult for colleges, their annual tuition and room and board fees have been increasing rapidly. In an attempt to help its money-strapped students, Florida Southern is bucking that trend by offering a tuition freeze for its returning students.

In a letter signed sent out by the college, FSC President Dr. Anne Kerr explained to students and parents that "maintaining the high level of educational excellence our students deserve has historically necessitated annual tuition, room and board increases." This year is no exception - FSC tuition and fees are going to increase for the next year.

However, the Board of Trustees has decided to place a freeze on the current tuition prices for returning full-time day students. That is, the prices that current, full-time day students are now paying for tuition and room and board will not change. To take advantage of the freeze, however, students must submit a pre-payment of $300, which will be later applied to students' fall semester bill.

The pre-payment due date, April 17, coincides with the deadline for students to both register for fall classes and complete the housing selection process.

Lee Mayhall, a member of the FSC Cabinet said that the $300 pre-payment does "a great deal for students."

The pre-payment helps the Board of Trustees plan for the number of students expecting to come back to FSC in the fall, she said, and it is just to ensure that each current, non-graduating student will be returning in the fall.

New FSC students enrolling in 2009-10 and those students who do not wish to submit $300 by April 17 will pay the new tuition fee of $22,795 beginning in the fall. The new cost for room and board will be $8,242.

"This new fee structure represents an increase over the current year of $1,042 for residential students and $650 for non-residential students," Kerr wrote in the letter.

Despite the increase, the college is still considered to be inexpensive for a small, private college. FSC is listed as a "best value" school in the "Princeton Review," "Collegeboard" and "The Fiske Guide to Colleges." In the "Fiske Guide to Colleges," FSC is called a "best buy," and listed in the top 26 of all private colleges in the country.

"We are very affordable and our goal is to make it affordable," Brad Parrish, another member of the Cabinet, said.

He added that the college's lower tuition contributes to the fact that FSC is seeing a record number of interested students, and that the rise in tuition and room and board costs at FSC are not leading members of the Board of Trustees to believe that potential students will be less interested in applying.

The rise in tuition and room and board here at FSC is due to many different factors, such as the rising costs of living, doing business, purchasing technological advances and buying food. The tuition will be about 3 percent more than what it has been this year.