The $119.3 million budget includes increases in tuition and fees for all students.
Beginning in fall 2017, full-time, resident undergraduate students at Marshall will pay $322 more per semester, undergraduate students who live in the metro* counties of Kentucky and Ohio will pay $440 more, and non-resident undergraduate students will pay $737 more. Tuition for most resident graduate students will go up $334 per semester, with metro graduate students paying $469 more and non-resident graduate students paying $806 more.
Mark Robinson, interim senior vice president for finance, presented the university’s proposed budget to the board, saying it includes projected revenue of $42.7 million in state funding and approximately $61.7 million from net tuition and fees. Robinson added that residence hall and meal plan rates will not increase for the 2017-18 academic year.
University officials said the nine percent increase in tuition and fees for all in-state and most out-of-state students is necessary to help offset ongoing cuts to state funding for public higher education. The West Virginia Legislature earlier this month passed a 2018 budget that cut Marshall’s overall state allocation 6.74 percent ($4.2 million), including the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. With these latest cuts, Marshall has lost more than $14.5 million in state funding in the last five years.
Marshall University President Jerome A. Gilbert said the Marshall University Foundation Inc. will make additional student financial assistance available this year to help families offset the tuition increase, and that the university will begin a capital campaign in the coming months to raise money, in part, for additional need-based scholarships. Gilbert said the university also will invest $166,000 this year in research opportunities for undergraduate students and $233,000 for increased student activities and service learning programs.
He added that the university heard legislators’ calls for state agencies to cut costs.
“Although this increase in tuition and fees will allow us to balance our budget this year, it will not address the $1.5 million budget deficit we have accumulated over the past several years due to reductions in state funding,” said Gilbert. “To help fill that budget hole, we will be restructuring a number of our colleges and academic departments this fall to further reduce administrative costs, and will continue to save money by eliminating and combining positions.”
Since 2013, Marshall has saved more than $6.2 million by eliminating 136 positions through attrition, mothballing an inefficient building, eliminating low-demand academic programs and combining areas of concentration, and undertaking a number of energy-efficiency measures in university facilities.
Gilbert said, “Marshall’s been a little ahead of the curve in that our university community has been anticipating the reductions in state funding would continue, so we began to institute cost-saving measures several years ago. At this point, we have significantly reduced our operating budget and will now need to find new ways to reduce our costs and raise revenue.”
*Metro tuition/fees apply to students who reside in Gallia, Jackson, Lawrence, Meigs, Pike or Scioto counties in Ohio, and Boyd, Carter, Elliott, Floyd, Greenup, Johnson, Lawrence, Martin and Pike counties in Kentucky.