Reporting like this only happens with your financial support. Donate to WKAR today!
Michigan State University students will be paying more for classes starting later this year.
MSU trustees voted Friday in Benton Harbor to increase block tuition rates for full-time undergraduate students by $370 per semester, or $740 per year.
Freshmen will now pay $8,828, sophomores will pay $9,023 and juniors and seniors will pay $10,012 per semester for in-state block tuition.
Out-of-state freshmen and sophomores will pay $22,520, and juniors and seniors will pay $23,188 in block tuition each semester.
Other tuition rates will go up accordingly, with an average increase of about 4%.
Trustees approved a 5% increase to room and board rates earlier this year.
Trustee Sandy Pierce, a Democrat from Northville, said the bump would partially offset potential cuts in the state budget.
“It should be noted that several significant influences remain unknown at this time,” Pierce said. “One such influence is the state of Michigan budget, which has yet to be finalized.”
The university is forecasting a $12 million deficit in its budget, almost all of which would be caused by cuts to state funding.
The board approved its $3.82 billion budget, including the tuition increase, in a 5-2 vote, with Trustees Rema Vassar, a Democrat from Detroit, and Mike Balow, a Republican from Plymouth, voting no. Trustee Kelly Tebay, an Ann Arbor Democrat, was absent.
Although some public commenters criticized a nearly $1 million pay increase offered to President Kevin Guskiewicz in an attempt to convince him to stay at MSU – which he turned down and announced he would be leaving to lead Clemson University – Pierce said none of that money would have come from the university’s budget.
Pierce said she received six phone calls from alumni willing to cover the pay increase the day after a special meeting where trustees approved the raise for Guskiewicz.
Pierce said the university’s budget is based on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s initial budget recommendation.
The university’s budget projects a 3% decrease in state funding. That’s a smaller cut than the budget proposal passed by the Republican majority in the state House of Representatives earlier this year, which would cut more than 60% of state funding for MSU.
That proposal is unlikely to make it through the Democratic-led state Senate and be signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Trustee Rebecca Bahar-Cook, a Democrat from East Lansing, asked Balow to use his role as the lone Republican on the board to encourage the Republican-led state House to drop proposed cuts to higher education funding.
“If the Michigan Legislature would keep up with its peers in other states, perhaps this board would not need to raise tuition rates in future years.”
