CONWAY Given the choice, at least some students at Coastal Carolina University would tell the school’s Board of Trustees to hold the line on tuition, and yes, if possible, lower it.
That will come as no surprise to members of the board’s finance committee, which is to hear a report from university officials Thursday on the financial impact of either not raising or lowering tuition next year.
What might surprise them is that some students are lukewarm about the issue, and that there are those in the student body who would actually like to see tuition go up for in-state students.
Trustees are considering holding next year’s tuition for in-state students at $9,310, and if they do, it will be the first time since the 1986-87 school year that tuition has not been increased from one year to the next.
“I hope that we’ll be able to do it,” said Board of Trustees member Larry Biddle, of Conway.
Not increasing the cost next year, he said, would be a show of good faith that the board wants to keep tuition as low as possible and still meet all the university’s obligations.
Doing that might require something of a balancing act, he added, but he believes tuition can at least remain where it is without sacrificing any programs or initiatives.
“I don’t think we want to give up anything,” Biddle said. “If excellence is the goal, we’ve got to keep it there.”
S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley has asked the state’s higher education institutions to hold the line on costs to in-state students, and CCU trustees could reasonably expect their consideration of not increasing tuition to be greeted with applause, as no doubt it will by some.
But not all.
“It’s not really a big difference to me,” said Josh Williams, a student from Aynor.
“I think the tuition is a good price right now,” said John Johnson, a student from Orangeburg. “It’s not as high as some other places.”
“It would be nice, maybe,” said Joshua Smith, a graduate student from Myrtle Beach.
All of them admit that their opinions are shaped because their parents are at least helping pay their way through college. If they were paying their own way, they said they’d strongly favor holding the line on tuition, at least, and lowering it if possible.
Smith said he makes $400 a month as a graduate assistant in the university’s assistance office and he hopes to get a fulltime job at the university after he graduates this year. Given that, he said, he’d rather tuition would go up than his chances for a future job go down.
Hayley Martin, a student from Conway whose parents foot her college bill, said she thinks trustees should not raise tuition. She said she would think the tuition a major concern if she were paying it.
“Lower it, definitely,” said Paris Carr, a student from Columbia.
The federal government and her parents pay for her schooling, she said. But keeping the cost as low as possible makes a college education at least available to some who couldn’t afford it if the cost were higher. And if we don’t educate the younger generation, she said, where are the next wave of doctors and teachers going to come from?
But it’s not only in-state students who have an opinion on what trustees should do.
Jenna Jordan, a freshman from Marlton, N.J., who pays for her education through student loans, would like to see in-state tuition go up.
“I know for out-of-state students, it’s really expensive to come here,” she said.
Tuition for out-of-state students tops $20,000.
If the in-state tuition went up just a little, Jordan reasoned, maybe the university could hold the line on out-of-state tuition.
The finance committee today is to make a recommendation on in-state tuition. If it does, it could be voted on by the full board at its meeting Friday morning.
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