Penn State's Board of Trustees voted unanimously Friday to increase in-state student tuition by 6.6 percent for the 2004-2005 academic year.
Commonwealth campuses will see a 5.3 percent increase.
The information technology fee will increase by $15 per semester to $175 for all students. The student activity fee will increase $4 at University Park and $3 at other locations.
"We have taken great care to keep tuition increases this year to the minimum amount needed to maintain the quality of a Penn State education," Penn State President Graham Spanier said.
The tuition increase for freshmen and sophomores at University Park will be $306 per semester, while juniors and seniors will be charged $310 per semester.
First and second year in-state students will pay $10,408 this year.
Spanier said Penn State's tuition increase was markedly lower compared to other Big Ten schools, such as the University of Illinois, which will increase by 13 percent, and Ohio State University, which will increase by 13.5 percent.
Executive Vice President and Provost Rodney Erickson, Cost Savings Task Force president, said the task force is responsible for saving each student about $100 per year, which is about a one percent reduction in tuition costs for students.
Since the program's inception in April 2002, he said each student has saved about $327.
Erickson said some of the program's cost-saving initiatives include the elimination of about 83 programs and majors, and the elimination or merging of 14 academic departments to cut back.
"It's not possible for us to close down the branch plant, and ship it overseas [to save money]," Erickson said.
Task force co-chair Gary Schultz said the task force would review the current tuition structure during the upcoming year to determine if the methods of charging students need to be revised.
Board member Steve Garban said the additional 3 percent in state funding included in this year's budget helped minimize the tuition increase.
He said he could not comment on the specific amount, but added that it would have fallen somewhere between this year's 6.6 percent and last year's 9.2 percent increase.
Despite the 6.6 percent tuition increase for in-state students, board member Joel Myers said the tuition rate is still a "bargain for in-state students," as the cost of tuition could be much higher if not for the task force's "money-saving strategies."
Myers also commented on the direct effect state appropriations have on tuition.
"The more money we get from the state, the less tuition will go up," he said. "It used to be that 70 percent of the university's funding came from the state and 20 percent came from tuition. Things are exactly the opposite now."
And, Myers said, more increases in state funding in the near future would be uncertain at best.
"I'm not optimistic about it," Myers said.
Garban said more studies should be conducted regarding the nature of in-state and out-of-state tuition.
"The reality is that we have the highest in-state tuition," he said. "At the same time out-of-state students need to pay a premium."
Undergraduate Student Government President Galen Foulke said he was not pleased with the board's decision to increase tuition.
"I'm sorry to see it's going up over all, but I'm happy to see the administration's making some efforts to curb the increase," he said. "It's not all negative. It's not [increasing ] for no reason."
Garban said he thinks that further tuition increases are likely because of continual funding cuts, but hoped the board would not have to continue to raise tuition.
"I hope we find a better balance. It's a tough thing," he said. "You never want to give on quality. We're hampered considerably by the state appropriations and the cuts in the past five years."
