Trustees to vote on tuition hike at executive board meeting

At an executive committee meeting today, the University's Board of Trustees is scheduled to vote on proposed increases in tuition, room and board and other student charges for the upcoming academic year. The University is requesting "an under 4.5 percent increase" in overall undergraduate charges due to a need to compete with peer institutions, Executive Vice President John Fry said. Six Ivy League institutions have already announced tuition increases ranging from a low of 2.9 percent for Yale University to a high of 4.5 percent for Cornell University. Fry said Yale, Brown and Princeton universities can afford to institute modest tuition increases due to their large endowments. Penn, by contrast, has only a $2.5 billion endowment, which is among the lowest in the Ivy League on a per-student basis. He added that Penn's proposed increase is the lowest that the University has implemented in over three decades. Last year, Penn Trustees voted to raise tuition by 5.3 percent, from $21,130 to $22,250. While this represented the largest tuition hike among the Ivies, the total cost of a year at Penn only increased by 4.5 percent. At a Trustees meeting in June, the Board approved a budget of $1.098 billion -- a 5.4 percent increase-- in an effort to control rising tuition costs. At the time, Penn Budget Director Mike Masch said the administration empathizes with students concerned about rising tuition costs. "That's why the University is cutting costs and increasing non-tuition revenues to control the undergraduate tuition," he explained. The Trustees called on administrators to improve efficiency and productivity by reducing staff and streamlining operations in certain departments. The board cited the new "cashless" PennCard, recently-established master's programs and outsourcing ventures as generating significant amounts of revenue. Last year, Time magazine writer and 1976 College graduate Erik Larson suggested that the University lower tuition by spending more of its endowment. The University currently spends 3 to 5 percent of its endowment annually-- the smallest percentage in the Ivy League. At the time, administrators insisted that the endowment covers those programs not funded by tuition. "If you want to start eating into the endowment, you have less to spend on programs and ultimately you would have to increase tuition," University President Judith Rodin said last year. And Penn administrators continue to invoke similar arguments. "People are starting to turn up the heat already among our institutions, and I don't think we have any choice but to respond," Fry said in Almanac.