The hike translates to about $330 per semester.
Auburn’s 2011–12 in-state tuition and fees totaled $8,698 and out-of- state tuition totaled $23,290, according to the university website.
“Funding for Auburn that covers faculty salaries, building maintenance, debt and pretty much everything else comes from two main sources,” said Don Large, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Auburn University.
The two main sources are state appropriations and student tuition.
“Historically, about 15 years ago, state appropriations covered about two-thirds of the budget and tuition covered about one-third of the budget,” Large said. “Now, after $100 million in cuts since 2008, we have raised tuition to cover about $60 million of that cut.”
Students are not happy about the increase.
“I think it’s not right at all since we pay so much already, especially out of state,” said Nick Magnella, freshman in aerospace engineering. “Just because they’re spending money to make more parking and the new track center doesn’t mean they can up the price.”
This year Auburn also has to deal with extra budget cuts from the state.
“We presented the tuition increase for the fall (knowing) the state is going to cut us another 5 percent, which is about another $12 million total,” Large said.
Auburn’s main campus will face cuts of $8.5 million. The remainder will be cut from Auburn’s Montgomery campus, AUM, agricultural experiments and extensions.
“The tuition (increase) will give us about $6 million for (the main campus budget), so we’ll be short about $2.5 million just in revenues from this year,” Large said.
Large said more budget reductions will be put into effect equally throughout all colleges on Auburn’s campus to compensate for the extra $2.5 million that is yet unfunded.
“We’ve been trying to stay away from classrooms, and so far we’ve been able to do that,” Large said.
Lauren Nix, freshman in secondary education, said Auburn has increased tuition too much.
“They already increased the parking, so it makes no sense that they would increase tuition,” Nix said.
Auburn’s budget has experienced cuts since 2008 because of the economy as well as less money coming into the state for education, Large said.
“We’ve asked the students to help cover about half of that, and then we’ll make the cuts for the other half, but pretty soon that’s not going to work,” Large said. “The state’s got to come forward or we’ll have to start charging more for tuition, or we’ll have to start making bigger cuts.”
Auburn’s board decided to increase tuition to cover about three-fourths of the budget cut.
“The board understood that if you want to maintain the quality that we have here at Auburn, then it does take a certain amount of dollars to do it,” Large said.
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