SAU sets 2017-18 tuition

Cost per credit hour going up $5; mandatory fees stay put

In-state students at Southern Arkansas University will pay $5 more per credit hour in the 2017-18 school year.

The Magnolia university’s board approved new tuition, fee, room and board rates at a meeting Thursday at Southern Arkansas University Tech in Camden. The panel kept all mandatory fees the same, resulting in a 1.83 percent increase from 2016-17 in tuition and mandatory fee rates, according to board documents.

The 4,771-student university is the first public four-year school to take up tuition and fee rates for the 2017-18 academic year. Public universities typically raise tuition and fee rates annually by 3 to 5 percent.

In-state undergraduate students taking 15 hours will pay $3,420 a semester, up from $3,345 being paid this semester. Out-of-state undergraduate students taking the same amount of credit hours will pay $6,078 a semester for the forthcoming school year compared with the $5,928 they now pay, an increase of 2.53 percent.

Students wishing to take more than 15 hours will be charged $100 per credit hour, according to the board book.

SAU President Trey Berry said campus administrators met for months to keep the school’s expenditures down in the 2017-18 school year, according to a news release from the university. That was coupled with state appropriations dropping to 25 percent of the university’s $69.1 million annual budget — “an alltime low,” according to the news release.

“In 2015, SAU was recognized by the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard as having the lowest cost and highest return of investment of any Arkansas fouryear institution,” Berry said in a statement, “and we strive daily to balance providing adequate resources for our high quality academic programs and campus life with keeping costs low for our students.”

The university budgeted using a two-year average of enrollment figures. The school has increased enrollment by nearly 35 percent since fall 2014, according to state Department of Higher Education data.

Driven in part by increased enrollment, the university is planning to increase student scholarships by $1.1 million, to $11,984,370, for the next school year, according to its budget book.

SAU also plans to use the increase in revenue to help with a reserve fund for cost-of-living increases of 2 percent for its classified and nonclassified employees, the budget book says. Administrators have also added “a limited amount of funds” for promotions and professors’ tenure.