Katelyn DeAgro ’17
December of 2016 marked the end of the first semester where the four-year plan to raise the cost of tuition was implemented at the University of Connecticut.
The UConn official website said that for the first semester the cost of tuition jumped by $750 dollars, or six point seven percent. This increase will be compounded over the next four years until the cost of tuition hits $13,700 in the fall of 2019. For those who live out of state, the increase will raise more slowly with only a three percent annual increase. In addition, all students will also be subject to an annual $100 increase in the mandatory fees charged by the school.
“It’s definitely affecting people,” Katherine Radcliffe ’15 said, a current student at the University of Connecticut. “You don’t want to get to that point with the tuition that anyone starts asking ‘is this worth it,’ you know?”
These price increases will coincide with cuts to budgets as UConn attempts to cover the 40 million dollar budget gap in 2016-2017. The Hartford Courant reported that “Cost-cutting will likely include hiring restrictions, workforce reductions, position eliminations, creating greater efficiencies and program consolidations or closures.”
According to UConn Today, UConn’s newspaper, this is not the first time that the school tuition has been raised on a four-year program. It is, however, the first time it has been raised by flat rates rather than percentages in hopes of keeping the increases more transparent.
“A main factor for why I’m going to UConn would be its cost,” Miranda Wright ’17, who will be attending UConn in the fall, said. “I think this is the case for many families [not to mention that] many are in a much, much harder financial situation than I am.”
According to Radcliffe, many of the students on campus don’t actually know the reasons behind both the budget cuts and the tuition increase.
“A lot of my friends that pay full tuition don’t understand why the hike is needed,” Radcliffe said. “We just recently got a Barnes and Noble to replace our university-owned COOP housing under the assumption that it was going to bring in more money. So a lot of people are really unhappy with the raise in tuition.”
When students from Staples who would be attending UConn in the fall were asked for their thoughts on the price hike, each of them was unaware. Wright mentioned that she had not been made aware of this plan with her sentiments echoed by Julia Brower ’17, who will also be attending the university in the fall.
“I have actually not even heard of this plan,” Brower said. “I think that I should have been made aware, because I should know what I’m going to be paying for.”
