Board approves tuition increase

NIU's Board of Trustees has approved new tuition rates for students enrolling this fall.

New undergraduate students taking 15 hours or more of classes per semester will pay $185 per credit hour, or $5,550 in tuition for 30 or more hours of classes during the 2006-07 academic year. That is an increase of about 10 percent over last year.

Under the Truth-in-Tuition law, that cost is locked in for incoming freshmen for the next eight consecutive semesters. NIU has added an additional “grace semester” to that period of time, freezing tuition rates for nine semesters.

“These increases put our costs squarely in the middle of the pack of public universities in the state,” NIU President John Peters said. “We have taken great pains to try to ensure that this tuition plan keeps an NIU degree affordable, while maintaining the value of that degree.”

Peters called the increase regrettable, but unavoidable.

“The cost of running the university climbs every year and our funding from the state simply has not kept pace,” the president explained. “For the first time in several years, we received a small increase from the state, but it does not allow us to keep up with inflation, let alone make up for the several years of painful cuts and flat budgets that we have endured this decade.”

The board also approved an increase of 7 percent for graduate and law students.

6-26-06