U of M drops costs for out-of-staters
University of Memphis students who hail from outside a 250-mile radius of the school will see a significant reduction in costs after the Board of Trustees voted Sept. 5 to restructure tuition.
President M. David Rudd said the changes are an effort to remove cost as a barrier for students, as well as to grow the university’s national and international profile and ability to be more selective in admissions. The university is also seeking a prestigious research designation, Rudd said, and the tuition restructuring is a strategy in that effort.
“I think without a move like this, an effort to grow our national footprint is going to be limited,” Rudd said.
The vote was unanimous, and the board’s student representative, Drew Gilmore, who doesn’t vote, also expressed support for the changes during the board’s committee meeting.
The university will seek to grow enrollment by about 252 students from both within and outside Tennessee to offset about $2.6 million of lost revenues due to the changes. Administrators said that won’t be a problem, but will invest about $730,000 in additional recruitment efforts.
Enrollment as of Sept. 4 was 21,608 students across all campuses.
The current billing system is also quite complicated, CFO Raaj Kurapati said. He said he knows because he is also a parent of a student at the university.
“I received our tuition bill and I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at,” he said.
The university will move to a simplified four-tiered tuition system for Tennessee residents, out-of-state residents, international students and online students. The changes significantly decrease the amount above in-state tuition that students from across the country will have to pay.
Out-of-state undergraduate students will pay an additional $160 per credit hour, and international students an additional $320 on top of what Tennessee residents pay.
Online and in-state students, which includes those from counties in Mississippi and Arkansas that border Shelby, will see no change next year as a result of the new structure, although the board will approve the base rate in the spring.
Out-of-state undergraduate students not in a bordering county but within a 250-mile radius will see a slight increase of about 2 percent. Graduate students in that radius will see a drop of 13 percent.
Almost all other out-of-state students will see massive cost cuts. Undergraduate and graduate students will see decreases in tuition of 27 and 30 percent, respectively. Out-of-state law school students will see a more modest decrease of 3 percent.
About 620 students are out-of-state and outside the 250-mile radius. About half of those receive athletic scholarships, so about 300 current students will see a lower bill.
Trustee Cato Johnson said the move is a key example of the importance of a local governing board for the university, which was part of the Tennessee Board of Regencies until the passing of the Focus Act in 2016.
“We are doing now what the will of the general assembly wanted us to do,” he said.
Board chairman Alan Graf said “now is the time to make this move,” when the population of students who trek to Memphis from more than 250 miles away is fairly small, and therefore the financial risk to the university to decrease those students’ costs is low.
“The University of Memphis is a great value,” Graf said. “We’ll become a better value going forward.”