WAMC New York News
(2008-11-19)
BUFFALO
(wned) -
The SUNY Board of Trustees voted yesterday to raise tuition $620 a year, or $310 a semester, starting in January. The State Legislature decides if all that extra cash goes to SUNY or if some is siphoned into the state's general fund
Student tuition bills arriving very soon will include that extra cost. Buffalo State College United Student Government President Dominique Gabriel says some students won't be able to pay that higher bill and won't be in class next year. Gabriel says the hike hits hard.
"Buffalo State College does house a large portion of first-generation low income students," said Gabriel. "The bills will come in November and December, which will put a damper on Christmas as well as attendance for next semester."
The hike puts tuition just under the ceiling for the state's TAP financial aid program so students won't lose that help.
UB President John Simpson is looking at increasing staff in the financial aid office to help students deal with rising costs. He's already looking at a campus where one-third of the students transfer in from the state's network of community colleges to deal with college costs by two-years near home.
Simpson says the state is engaged in tuition roulette, raising tuition and siphoning it off.
"This has to change," Simpson said. "Unless the state puts its higher education institutions on a sound and predictable financial footing, with a rational tutition policy, I think that the kind of things that would come with UB 2020, whether its the academic health center downtown, or the 10,000 new jobs, it's just not going to happen."
Simpson says one good thing about the national economic slowdown is that UB, and SUNY overall, may attract good students who decide to go public because private schools are too expensive. © Copyright 2012, wned
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