Students see differential tuition benefits
For more than a decade, a number of colleges at USU have charged differential tuition — an additional fee on top of regular tuition, which pays for professors and extracurricular programs.
For an engineering student at USU, differential tuition is a matter of $150 over four years. For a graduate student in the communicative disorders and deaf education major, it totals about $3,500. For a business graduate student, the price is $6,600.
These costs are not going away, said Ken Snyder, executive dean and chief administrative officer for the Huntsman School of Business. In fact, he said, he predicts differential tuition — at least for business students — will rise in coming years.
Snyder said even with differential tuition, the cost of a USU business degree is lower than at similar institutions.
“We have a lower base tuition, so our lower overall cost to the student is low,” Snyder said.
According to a study by Glen Nelson, the chief financial officer for the Arizona Board of Regents, 57 percent of public universities charge differential tuition. In Utah, schools that implement the tuition include Weber State, the University of Utah and USU.
When the tuition was first implemented, Snyder said, the school followed the example of the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business. Since then, administrators have tried to remain a year or two behind University of Utah in terms of differential tuition.
Currently, 13 faculty members from the business school are partially or wholly funded by differential tuition, and the school is in the process of hiring 11 more.
Differential tuition for the business school was first raised significantly in 2007, Snyder said. Last year, the college asked for an undergraduate upper-division course-fee increase from $52 to $67 per credit. Graduate fees took a similar jump, rising from $199 to $249 per credit.
In the next two years, he said, the business school plans to raise differential tuition by an additional $100 for graduate classes and $30 for undergraduate classes.
Snyder said most public university funding obligation is met by the state, but due to the nature of USU’s unique role as a research institution, the business school tends to hire professors that have dual research and teaching roles.
This makes the cost of hiring a professor much greater than at similar schools in the state, he added.
“I don’t mean any disrespect at all to UVU or Weber, but, in those two cases, they’re both teaching institutions. The faculty are not required to do research,” Snyder said.
He said the business school gets a certain line of funding from the university to hire individual professors, but hiring qualified staff often exceeds the cost of that line. The School of Business currently employs five of the six highest paid professors on campus, according to public record. All have salaries greater than $150,000.
Differential tuition isn’t limited to funding professors. The Small Enterprise and Development (SEED) program run by the business school is largely funded by differential tuition, he said. The actual structure of the program, like director David Herrmann’s salary, is completely funded by tuition. The program provides micro-loans to people in Third World countries who have entrepreneurial ideas.
Last summer, senior Jerel Lillywhite, a dual history and business major, traveled to Ghana with SEED. He said seeing people grasp basic business principals and put them to use was worth the time — and extra tuition — spent.
“This is a quality institution, and business people should recognize you don’t get something for nothing,” Lillywhite said.
Josh Hanks, a senior majoring in international business, said he did an internship with SEED. Traveling to Uganda, he helped provide micro-loans to a number of small entrepreneurial projects, including a small poultry farm and a man who used solar panels on his roof to provide electricity for his neighbors.
Though he called his experience with SEED “rewarding,” he said it should be funded a different way if possible.
“I think SEED is one of the best things on campus, but I don’t think differential tuition is the answer,” Hanks said. “Even though it’s a great cause, I honestly don’t think it is something we need to pay for.”
Michael Glauser, a professor of management and executive director of entrepreneurial programs, said he left Westminster College and came to USU because the business program was lacking support. He said USU business students often have more opportunities to network and gain internships than at other institutions.
Eventually this will make USU world-class, he said.
“When they leave here, they have links to the business world rather than sitting in the classroom. They get extracurricular field experience,” he said. “Having guest speakers and entrepreneurs is very expensive. But they allow you to attract strong people with excellent experience.”
When the increases were presented to Erin Kelley as a member of the Business Council, last year, she said she was hesitant about how the additional tuition would be be spent. After one year, she said, she’s impressed with the changes.
“They’ve already started creating more legacy,” she said. “It will help my degree have more value.”
– allee.evensen@usu.edu