To put herself through school, Olivia Peterson, a junior in sociology, holds down two jobs in retail and another as a tutor.
For this semester alone, on top of tuition, Peterson paid over $100 for books. In addition, she’s responsible for her own gas, food and other expenses out of pocket.
“Let’s be honest, life is expensive,” Peterson said. “I make money, but then it’s eaten up by school, and the rest has to go to my savings.”
For the full 2014–2015 academic year, the Office of Admissions estimates the cost of attendance at the U for a resident student living off campus is more than $24,000. For a resident living on campus, that price is increased by another thousand dollars. The total includes room and board, books, transportation and other miscellaneous expenses. This ballpark figure is taken from tuition with an average of 15 credit hours per semester.
Last spring, the U approved a tuition increase of 5.9 percent. With the rise of tuition, there is a correlation of decreased financial aid and state funds. According to the Legislative Fiscal Analyst, 25 years ago, state funds provided support for 77.4 percent of higher education costs. In 2013, state support was only 53.4 percent.
For students like Margaret Carlson, a senior in biology, this increase doesn’t go overlooked.
“Tuition here is increasing, and it’s cheaper than most other schools,” Carlson said. “But you can see tuition going up steadily, and at the same time, scholarships and loans are shrinking. It would be better if we saw more equality in the numbers.”
The rise in tuition price has changed the scope of financial aid distribution. According to university data, in 2008, the amount of aid distributed as loans to students by the U was 68 percent. This increased to 84 percent in 2012. In effect, this increase shrunk the percentage of grants and scholarships offered in that year. Although a NerdScholar study showed Utah to be one of the states with the lowest student debt per graduate in 2011, 45 percent of Utah students still held debt.
Marli Stevens, a junior in environment and sustainable studies, said she feels fortunate she didn’t need to take out a loan, but balancing the financial stress of paying tuition herself can be difficult.
“There are ways you can be smart about your money and budget, but it’s definitely getting harder and harder nowadays because things are getting more expensive,” Stevens said. “I have to be really conscious of my money, and sometimes it means not eating lunch.”
Andrew Barili, a senior in Chinese and international relations, enrolled at the U as an out-of-state student, making his tuition almost triple what in-state tuition is.
“Being worried about tuition, I run into a lot of the, ‘Does my savings account have anything at all?’ scenario,” Barili said. “Adding that kind of stress on top of studies when you run your savings on a semester-to-semester basis is not the easiest way to study.”
An increase in tuition can also mean taking funds from other recreation and extracurricular activities in the student experience. Carlson has experienced this first-hand. She dropped out of the running club because of the race fees.
“Even though I really enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun, my money had to go elsewhere,” Carlson said.
The correlation between the rising price of tuition and depletion of state funding and financial aid can mean several things for students who are currently enrolled in university and have to face the increase, and not all of those things are bad.
“I think it can make you more responsible and it can definitely help people budget better,” Stevens said. “But I can also see it leading to other problems: getting into a lot of debt, taking out student loans, and that’s the hard part about it.”
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