It’s safe to say that at Ole Miss, students pay for quality when they pay their tuition at the beginning of every semester.
The tuition fee is ever-changing at Ole Miss. So many may have breathed a sigh of relief when, for the 2009-2010 spring semester, tuition wasn’t raised for the first time in several years.
However, it has been announced this spring that tuition will be raised for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year. This fall, in-state undergraduate students will pay $2,718 per semester, compared to last year’s $2,553.
The additional $165 is a 6.4 percent increase from last year.
“It’s a byproduct of the fact that we continue to receive fewer and fewer dollars from the State of Mississippi,” Dewey Knight, associate director of financial advising, said. “And as the support from that channel of revenue goes down, if we’re going to maintain our levels of quality and our standards of service, to cover the costs, there’s no other place to go but tuition.”
For some, the question still lingers as to why the University takes it from student’s pockets instead of raising the funds in another fashion.
“We explore every avenue of revenue, such as private donations, and we do a very good job at Ole Miss,” Knight said. “Tuition is not our first choice, but when it comes down to balancing the books, tuition is what we have to use to do it.”
When compared to other public colleges across the nation, the increase of 6.4 percent is relatively small. Schools in other parts of the country, such as California and Florida, are seeing doubledigit percentage increases.
“I have partial financial aid, but my parents still pay for a certain amount of my school,” Andrea Pollard, a senior criminal justice major, said. “I have two brothers in school in San Diego, and (my parents) have to help them also. Not only do they have to help with their (my brothers’) tuition, now they have to pay more of mine.”
For the many students on the Ole Miss campus that are paying for their own tuition, this could mean even less money in the students’ wallets.
“It’s going to leave me with less money to do things I want to do, less money for fun. I have an academic scholarship, but it doesn’t provide for everything,” Chase Middleton, a senior biology and psychology major, said.
Knight stressed that people need to realize that higher education is expensive, but the other option of no higher education is even more expensive.
Knight said tuition increases are likely a reality for the foreseeable future. The university will probably see an increase in tuition nearly every year.
If the state continues to give the university less money, the school will have to make up for it some way. And unfortunately, the school may always be forced to resort to tuition increases, Knight said.