Where Does Your Increased Tuition Money Go?

Where Does Your Increased Tuition Money Go?

By Tara Giddings

The USF tuition for the 2017-2018 academic year will be $45,760, a 3.9% increase from the 2016-2017 rate of tuition. 

“I think that it’s a little unfortunate” says USF student Chloe Charlton (20).

“I don’t really like it” said another USF student Jamie Morgan (21).

“I’m not very happy” says Lauren Tamura, a 21-year-old English major, even though she acknowledged “ I understand the price of a higher education.” Tamura , “As soon as I got the email, I actually applied for more merit scholarships and such, because I was shocked that it was going up.” 

Part of the tuition increase will be returned to the students in the form of increased financial aid. One main cost driving the higher tuition is financial aid, according to Charles Cross, USF’s Vice President of Business and Finance.“We award, currently, almost a hundred million dollars a year of tuition money to students” said Cross. 

Financial aid makes up 21.2% of the expenses for 2018, according the operating budget for USF. While only some of the tuition money goes towards financial aid, that means some money will be coming back to some students. “The bad news is it’s an increase,” says Cross, “the good news is we are providing support for those students who most need it.”

Regarding the tuition increase “I get why you’d be upset, but not so much surprised by it.” said says Nia Araya, a 19-year-old History and International Studies major, “I get why you would be upset if your financial aid or what-not didn’t increase, cause it should, it should correlate.” 

In fact, USF’s President, Father Paul Fitzgerald said “the average student pays about 65 percent” of the price to attend the university. The differences in need for financial aid vary within the student body.

For example, Araya said, “It’s harder for international students or people who don’t get any aid, cause then you’re spending more every year, but not getting any more help.” Cross agrees. In discussing the increase in tuition,“for a number of students that’s significant” says Cross, “for others it’s not.”

Some students are only able to attend USF due to financial aid. Chloe Charlton, a 20-year-old majoring in English said in regard to her financial aid package “If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be going here.” Increased financial aid is important for those students, to make up for the increase in tuition. “Right now I have plans to continue going here, but if anything changes I’ll have to probably transfer.” said Angie Preciado (18) about her reliance on financial aid. 

However, not all U.S. students qualify for financial aid, and for these students the tuition increase is a burden without the benefits. There are students from middle-class families attending USF whose families do not qualify for financial aid, but are still struggling with the high cost of tuition. Mariel McMindes (18) said, “I think it’s pretty ridiculous that already tuition is so high, especially if you don’t have financial aid.”

Certain students who do not receive financial aid are considering leaving USF due to the tuition increase. “I don’t qualify for any government aid, but it is still hard to afford,” says Stuart Gill, a 20 year-old English major currently in his sophomore year at USF, “I’ve got a $12,000 scholarship to another school, and that’s heavily factoring into my decision.” 

 As to why students of different economic backgrounds are given different amounts of aid,“there are federal formulas that we follow in our awarding of financial aid,” said Cross. According to Fitzgerald, the economic diversity at USF is “a third of our students are first generation college students” meaning many students come from families with low wealth. In the rest of the student body, says Fitzgerald, “we have a middle third of our students” who fall into the middle- class range, while “a third of our students are from affluent families” many of whom are international students. “By raising tuition and raising financial aid, I think what USF is trying to do is have the more affluent students subsidize the less affluent students” said Adjunct Professor Maximilian DeLaure (45).

The tuition increase at the University of San Francisco is also going towards costs other than financial aid. These other costs include compensation, and information technology improvements, according to the administration. A large factor in USF’s budget leading to the need for a tuition increase is “compensation costs, that’s salaries and benefits” says Cross. Sixty-five percent of “cost structure is related to compensation,” according to Cross. 

The compensation goes, in part, to the faculty who are providing the students’ education. Many USF students are happy with the quality of their education, despite disliking the high cost of tuition.“I feel like my education is top notch,” says Emese Maklary (18), “all of my professors are awesome, I feel like all of them care.” 

Some students think the education at USF is preferable to other universities, and feel they are getting their money’s worth for their education. Jamie Morgan, (21), said, “I transferred from another school,and I feel like the quality of the teachers and the classes here is so much better than what I was getting.” A professor in the English department, Ana Rojas (39), said at USF the students receive “a great deal of one-on-one attention that you would not get at a state or publicly funded university.”

However, there are students who are less pleased with their education. “I feel like the education at USF could be better in many ways,” said McMindes. 

Regarding the cost of compensation, Fitzgerald said, “We want to hire and retain the best faculty, which means we have to pay very competitive salaries.”Many students agree and are happy with the faculty at USF. “I do feel like I’m getting my money’s worth in that the professors are really good,” says Tamura. 

Total compensation in 2018 is projected to be 54.1% of USF’s expenses, according to the operating budget. In terms of compensation costs “we don’t look at faculty as a separate group, we look at all employees,” says Cross, “we try to treat all employees similarly as far as increases.” 

 Some people at USF think the recent difficult contract negotiations involving full-time faculty compensation are related to the increase in tuition. The negotiations ended with a three year contract for full-time faculty with an increase of two percent per year. “It seems to me that the approach has been to slow down the increase of salary of faculty, and at the same time increase the tuition of students” said DeLaure.

Some students also think the tuition increase is due to salary negotiations. “It feels a little bit like the school was fighting to not pay their employees more, and then when they lost that battle, they were like, ok, we’ll take that money out of the students pockets,” said Gill. 

While some faculty and students feel the contact negotiations factored prominently in the tuition increase, according to Cross in USF administration “the full time faculty, that a contact negotiation was prolonged, but is no different than any other employee groups.” Cross says “we project those costs, and we factored those costs into the decision to raise tuition.”

Compensation is just one of the costs involved in the high cost of tuition at USF. Another large cost contributing to the need for the tuition increase at USF is “IT related costs, continuing to expand and enhance computer networks, the WiFi, the broadband access,” according to Cross. 

The expense for information technology services is projected to go up 5.1%, according to the USF operating budget for 2018 at USF. Cross says that the students’ “use of the broadband is immense” and“requires tremendous resources to be able to deliver that content.”

 Along with providing the technology, there are additional costs for security. “On a daily basis, we have four to five thousand attempts to hack our systems,” says Cross. The security is in place to protect students’ identities and “that takes millions of dollars a year,” according to Cross. “Most people don’t realize how much money is spent on stuff you never see in the IT infrastructure,” said Cross.

Issues involving the use of information technology at USF is a concern for some students.“Maybe they’re gunna finally make the WiFi work,” said Jezebel Kachanon (19), in regard to her thoughts on the tuition increase. 

As Fitzgerald and Cross point out, the increase in tuition is not limited to the University of San Francisco, but is part of a larger trend in the increasing cost of higher education. The increase in expense is prominent in university systems. “I think all American universities are very expensive,” said DeLaure. 

Santa Clara University, in comparison, is increasing tuition by 4.5%, and adding a $625 student enhancement fee for next fall, overall charging students about 6% more, according to Cross.  

Regarding the increase in tuition at USF, “I look at the cost of private education in the state and across the county and that seems to me commensurate” said Rojas. “I don’t think USF is ripping off its students,” she says, “I think this is a more broadly systemic problem.” 

Susannah Needham's (19) response to the tuition increase was “I’m just not surprised because everything gets more expensive every year.”

As for a way to help lower future tuition costs for students, Fitzgerald says“the long-term solution is to grow the endowment.” Rojas concurred:“we do not have this enormous endowment, this capital that allows us to make money, and that allows us to help our students.”  A larger endowment could help USF provide more money for financial aid to more students. 

Over Fitzgerald’s last three years working at USF, he said, “we raised $126,000,000 in new gifts and pledges.” However, it will take a while before the university will “meet families financial needs to be able to send their kids here,” said Fitzgerald. 

For next year, USF students will by paying more in tuition to help pay for the need-based financial aid, compensation to the staff and faculty, and, hopefully, making the WiFi work by spending more on information technology services. But, the issue of increasing cost for education will be affecting students at many other universities as well. The possibility of a larger endowment may one day give students the opportunity to pay less for a private education, such as USF. However, for now, “I was willing to pay a little bit of extra for the better education,” says Lauren Tamura.