Tuition will rise 4.34 percent next year, according to the university’s financial plan for fiscal years 2015 to 2018, published by the Division of Financial Affairs on Jan. 31 and released to the Georgetown community March 19.
The financial plan specifies ways to increase revenue and cut costs to scale back a $9 million deficit as well as the use of student loans in financial aid packages.
The 4.3 percent tuition increase will take effect for the 2014-2015 academic year, bringing undergraduate tuition, not including room and board, from $44,280 to $46,200. The university will also allocate $4.4 million more to funding for financial aid in the upcoming year.
Despite the increase for 2015 tuition, according to Rubenstein, the university hopes to prevent large tuition increases.
“This is a nationwide issue, but for our students and parents we act to limit tuition increases as much as possible, while continuing to fund and raise philanthropic dollars to fund our need-blind, meet-full-need admissions policy,” Rubenstein wrote in an email.
“Philanthropic support is critical in order to invest and pay for those things which cannot be met with tuition dollars.”
Although yearly tuition increases, generally below 5 percent, are fairly standard across universities, some students object to the increase.
“We already have very high tuition rates and we don’t want to see those increase, which is why, and I’ll reiterate, the university should be engaging students in the nitty-gritty details of long-term and short-term financial planning so that we can see their decision-making process when it comes to tuition increases, for instance,” GUSA President Trevor Tezel (SFS ’15) said. “A 4.3 percent increase is kind of alarming anyway, along with the fact that we believe that a Georgetown education should be within the reach of any student and it should not be exclusionary based off of a high price, and every time we have a tuition increase, that guarantee becomes a little less valid, so we always need to be looking at that.”
According to Rubenstein, the tuition increase, along with the rest of the financial plan, aims to help the university remain strong, despite outside obstacles.
“This plan seeks to maintain our competitive position as a top research university. The financial plan builds upon the success of fiscal year 2013 and our projections for fiscal year 2014, while being mindful of the external economic factors facing higher education today,” Rubenstein wrote in a campus-wide email.
In upcoming years, the university will also confront the problem of decreased federal funding due to governmental budgetary constraints. Despite these constraints, Rubenstein said that he does not think that the change will negatively impact students.
“At Georgetown, we forecast that federally sponsored research after falling in fiscal year 2014 will decrease again in fiscal year 2015 before it stabilizes,” Rubenstein wrote in an email to The Hoya. “We will still have an active research program, albeit a bit smaller, so I don›t think that our students will be directly affected.”
Major expenses for the university in the upcoming years include new residence halls — both the construction of the Northeast Triangle and the renovation of the Old Jesuit Residence Project — as well as the construction of the Healey Family Student Center and the Intercollegiate Athletic Center.
The HFSC, mainly funded through donations, will maintain annual operation costs of $930,000, while the new residence halls will bring in $4 million in revenue each year.
“The student center is primarily gift-funded, which is of tremendous benefit because that means students will benefit without us having to use tuition dollars to cover construction costs,” Rubenstein wrote. “We are also very excited about being able to provide more housing on campus because that serves a real need. It is also a way to capture revenues and keep it on campus to maintain and develop an important resource for our student body into the future.”
The university will also implement cost-cutting measures, specifically by reducing costs in each school and working toward efficiency. These changes will lead to a projected $400,000 improvement to the projected deficit this fiscal year.
“Integration is the key concept here,” Rubenstein wrote. “More than ever our approach to financial planning brings together the various parts of the university, from academic units to university services departments, to avoid duplication, share best practices and take advantage of those things we can do better or more efficiently by acting together.”
Kyle Zhu (SFS ’14) wrote a response to the financial plan addressed to Rubenstein and University President John J. DeGioia, which he forwarded to The Hoya. He said he thinks the university does not keep students informed on financial matters.
“In my four years here, this is the first financial plan that I have seen,” Zhu wrote. “Students are the major source of revenue and major stakeholder of this university, and I have felt a continual lack of information in regards to how my very large tuition is spent.”
This year, decrease in financial aid forced Zhu to take out a student loan for the first time.
Zhu said that he attempted to start a dialogue through his email, although he has not yet received a response from the university.
“As a senior, I wanted to respond to an issue that had been frustrating me for a long time. I was just really curious about certain financial decisions made and was surprised by the lack of information about Georgetown’s financials,” Zhu wrote in an email.
According to Rubenstein, the university will alter its financial aid offerings based on student need in order to address this problem.
“We believe we have forecasted accurately the financial aid need for purposes of our financial planning,” Rubenstein wrote. “But I want to stress that this is a forecast. Undergraduate financial aid is based upon our need-blind, meet-full-need admissions policy and is not limited to what we forecast. We will modify our budget and plan based upon the actual financial aid determinations.”
