The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted in June to once again raise undergraduate tuition at its four-year campuses and allow for differential tuition for UW-Madison’s College of Engineering.
Tuition for all undergraduate students at UW-Madison will rise by $348 this fall, a 5.5 percent increase compared to last year. Students at UW-Milwaukee will pay $340 more, and those at the 11 other four-year universities will pay $265 more.
In dollar amounts, the increases were the second lowest approved by the regents in the past six years.
Engineering students will pay an additional $300 per semester on top of the $348 increase. The differential tuition is set to rise to an additional $200 per semester for the 2009-10 academic year, and another $200 for 2010-11.
“Almost by definition, engineering students are involved in designing, understanding, working with technology, and we need to allow our students to keep up with that rapid change,” said Steven Cramer, associate dean of the College of Engineering.
Included in the tuition hike is a program to increase financial assistance for low-income students.
According to Cramer, support from students and staff for the plan has been strong considering the College of Engineering was the only program of its kind in the Big Ten without a differential tuition system. As a result, many engineering instructors were leaving UW for higher salaries at rival schools, he added.
“The price to hire quality faculty is continuing to rise, and the differential tuition will allow us to be able to attract the highly-qualified people we need,” Cramer said.
Cramer believes the hike will not deter people from aiming for an engineering major because engineering programs at the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan, two popular engineering programs in the Midwest, also have a differential tuition of more than $1,000 per semester.
“Those schools have seen their enrollment continue to climb, and I expect to see our enrollment continue to climb as well,” Cramer said.
UW-Madison’s School of Business already has a differential tuition of $500 per semester, and UW-Milwaukee has differential tuition for its nursing, engineering, business, arts and architecture programs.
“This one (differential tuition program) is done to offset some of the uniquely high costs associated with being an engineering major,” UW System spokesperson David Giroux said. “But they’re all used for very different, specific things.”
Campuswide differential tuitions have already been put into effect at UW-Platteville and UW-Oshkosh, where the respective fees of $100 and $55 per student are used for extra services like career placement programs.
The regents also froze tuition for out-of-state graduate students in efforts to bring their tuition in line with peer schools.
–The Associated Press contributed to this report.