Gettysburg to Raise Tuition 4.9%

By Andrew Arenge

Gettysburg College announced Thursday that the comprehensive fee for the 2010-2011 academic year will raise 4.9 percent from $48,050 to $50,880. Though the entire operating budget for the college is only raising 2.5 percent, to $110.8 million, President Janet Morgan Riggs justified the increase in tuition by pointing to underperforming aspects of the college’s funding portfolio.

“We are still suffering from some of the strains that you heard me talk about before,” said Riggs. “The endowment has decreased in value,.we have had some reduction in [annual] giving,. [and] we have had some issues with interest income.so the bottom line is we still have some of the same pressures facing us.”

The 4.9 percentage increase in the comprehensive fee comes just one year after the college was able to post the lowest percentage increase in 40 years. “Last year the percentage increase was 2.9 percent,” said Riggs on Thursday. “It was about the lowest of any of our peer institutions, in fact there were many presidents [from other institutions] who came to me and said ‘How are you managing with only a 2.9 percentage increase?’” At the time that this record low percentage increase was announced, according to an interview conducted with President Riggs after she was named the 14th President of Gettysburg College, she commented that the Board of Trustees “was really focused on being sensitive, particularly in this economic climate, to the families that are out there.”

She also commented a year ago that the college “[is] trying our best to cut our costs and we are trying to keep tuition increases down, and I think they are probably going to stay down for the foreseeable future.”

In the college’s attempt to be more fiscally responsible, the administration has been able to cut $2.7 million from its operating budget, representing approximately 2.5 percent of the total budget for the past two years. These cuts have come from a variety of places that included a salary freeze for all employees, reduced or eliminated travel and entertainment costs, renegotiated service contracts, and less hard copy mailings to prospective students, current students and alumni.

When considering the operating budget for the 2010 – 2011 fiscal year, President Riggs and the administration “wanted to move ahead a little more aggressively” to ensure that they are continuing to offer a high quality educational experience.

The college plans to use the newly raised funds in a variety of ways. One key aspect to the tuition increase is the college’s plans to add three new tenure track positions to the current faculty to allow for the school to finalize its conversion to a 3-2 teaching course load. These positions have been added to the department of Biology, the department of Chemistry and the Sunderman Conservatory of Music. President Riggs hopes that the transition to a 3-2 teaching load will give faculty “additional time to not only be engaged in their disciplines but to be pulling students into that engaging experience.”

The college also plans to spend part of the funds to increase faculty diversity, finish the final phase of the Life Safety Initiative, and establish a permanent line item for student/faculty research.

The increased rate of tuition will also allow the college to invest further in financial aide packages. The 2010-2011 budget includes an additional $2.7 million, which represents an increase of 7 percent, to help off set the cost of tuition for some individuals. “We do remain committed to making Gettysburg College accessible to students from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds,” said Riggs.

Crossing the proverbial boundary of $50,000 may be shocking to some, but it has quickly become an industry norm. According to Daniel Konstalid, Vice President of Finance & Administration, “There is always angst about crossing a barrier and making a thoughtful decision around it. In our case there were 40 to 50 [other highly competitive liberal art colleges] who crossed it before we did.” According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education that was published on , 58 private liberal arts colleges joined the $50K club during the 2009-2010 academic year. In an analysis done by The Chronicle, 7 years ago only 2 colleges had a comprehensive fee that was greater than $40,000.

Even as the economy has hit a rough spot, tuition has continually increased at institutions across the country. “We don’t think [the increase] is a surprise [to people],” commented President Riggs. “We are happy to show people the rate at which we have increased and the rate at which we expect to continue. I do not think students come in with an expectation that [tuition] is going to stay flat, or at least I certainly hope that, that is not what we hope to project.”

Though tuition continues to be increased year after the year, the incremental rate at which that tuition rises tends to be starting to standardize. “Rates of increase have been all over the place in high education as long as I have been paying attention,” said Riggs. “I remember when we were running 10 and 12 percent increases for a while over the years. For the last several years we have been averaging about 6 percentage increase.”

To respond to the continual increase of tuition, some schools have begun to start rethinking the traditional model of higher education. During her recent press conference about the tuition increase, President Riggs mentioned that she is currently discussing potentially sharing services or even academic programs with our peer institutions. Though nothing has officially been decided yet, Riggs mentioned that. “There are conversations going on in higher education as a result of this economic situation that you haven’t seen before.”

Ultimately, Riggs sees Gettysburg College as a “resource intensive enterprise” and doesn’t see the school straying from those commitments in the coming years. “At a liberal arts college it is all about the interactions between people and we are not in assembly mind mode. We don’t think that a good way to proceed is to jam more students in the classroom so that we can save money. We are really dedicated to providing this really high quality education experience.”