In light of last semester’s announcement of a $6.1 million budget deficit, tuition as well as room and board for Fairfield University will be raised by 2.75 percent for the coming school year. This leaves the University’s sticker price, or total cost of attendance without any aid, at $53,640.
Initially announced through an email from President Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., administrators held a forum for students on Friday, April 13, to share the details of this new projected budget.
In regard to this tuition increase, von Arx said: “The financial reality is that we really need to bring it under control. Previous years it was six, seven, eight percent … we just kept doing that and your parents kept paying. [We] can’t do that anymore. We know that.”
Von Arx was joined at the forum by Vice President of Finance Julie Dolan, the primary speaker of the event, as well as several other administrative figures. Dolan stressed the necessity of this increase due to the fact that Fairfield is “a very tuition dependent institution.”
“That means that a huge portion of our revenue pie [chart] has not been growing for the last five years very much,” she continued, citing an annual increase in net undergraduate revenue of less than half a percent. “Meanwhile, the rate of tuition increase, the sticker price, has grown.”
Von Arx explained that despite the necessity of this increase, “the tuition increase for this year is going to be as low as it has ever been in early memory at Fairfield University.” He added: “It is below the cost of living. It is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, tuition increase of any of our competitors,” citing schools such as Holy Cross, Quinnipiac and Villanova, all of which have tuition increases around four percent.
However, some voiced different sentiments in regards to this increase. FUSA President Robert Vogel ‘13, who also sits on the student budget committee, said: “2.75 percent is still 2.75 percent, and if we keep growing at 2.75 percent then eventually we’re going to hit $60,000 and eventually we’re going to hit $70,000. There’s no avoiding that if we keep growing.”
Students were not the only ones to voice opinions. Dr. Giovanni Ruffini, a classical studies professor, said, “There’s a lack of transparency that’s part of the problem. … Most people don’t know what’s driving that tuition increase.”
He continued: “Frankly, the suspicions that some of the faculty have are that increases are not being driven by education-related expense. In other words, you’re not getting more value for your dollar. You’re getting more administration for your dollar.”
However, Dolan assured that hiring for new positions was being kept to a minimum, and conversely that the new budget did not include any additional layoffs.
In regards to the school’s current standing with the recent deficit, von Arx said, “Our number one goal is to balance the budget, and we believe that we balanced the budget.”
Dolan explained the reasons behind the original imbalance, citing the fact that the annual expense increase was slightly higher than the annual growth rate of revenue. “This is why we’ve been facing kinds of challenges this year and next year for the first time because the lines are not quite in parallel,” she said.
When asked her perception of the school’s efforts to address the deficit, forum attendee Alicia Bisonette ‘12 said, “I feel like they’re trying … I feel like a lot of the pressure that has been making them try harder has come from the students, so I think it’s great that Fairfield is finally stepping up a little bit on the student end of it.”
In addition to balancing the budget as well as keeping tuition as low as possible, von Arx explained the goal for “financial aid [to] remain the same.”
Dolan explained how this directly correlated with the tuition increase: “Obviously, here at Fairfield we have a deep and long held commitment to providing as much need-based financial aid to our students as we possibly can to allow academically-worthy students to be able to attend regardless of financial certifications. But often times, in order to pay for that, since we are not a particularly well-endowed … some institutions have to increase their sticker price of their tuition.”
Vogel said, “We have had that commitment [to financial aid], but at the cost of a higher sticker price for everyone. So where is that balance? Where is it that we start to realize we can’t keep doing that? We can’t keep raising tuition and then raising institutional financial aid, need-based or merit-based.”
In an infographic slideshow, Dolan shared a five year look at the difference in the University’s annual revenues and expenses from 2007 to 2012.
“The sticker price for tuition cumalitively went up about 25 percent over that five year period,” she said. “The discount rate, the amount people actually pay after financial aid … that went up about 13 percent in total.”
In addition to these numbers, Dolan shared that compared to 2007, 2012 saw:
• a 4 percent decrease in the number of undergraduate students
• a 14 percent point increase in the number of students receiving some form of financial aid, with the overall cost of financial aid increasing by about $20 million
• a combined increase in faculty and staff salaries of approximately $8 million and an increase in benefits by $6.5 million
• an approximately $8 million increase in the amount of fixed rate interest and depreciation (debt)
So what does 2013 hold, aside from the tuition bump?
For revenue, the projected budget is set for an incoming freshman class of 925, though admissions has a target of 950. Dolan explained how this leaves some leeway, as opposed to this year when the incoming class was only 909 students despite a projected budget of 950 students.
On the expense side, faculty salaries will be raised between one and 1.5 percent, dependent upon individual faculty salary. Faculty benefits will also be reduced from 10 to 8 percent.
Dolan concluded: “It’s sort of a balancing act for us to try and have the revenue base that is growing, but not to make ourselves so out-of-reach that sticker shock turns people away.”
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