file photo by Amarra Boone/Photo Editor
Cabrini has chosen to freeze undergraduate tuition fees at $28,932 until May 2016. In addition to tuition fees, room and board will also stay as is for the 2015-2016 school year.
This decision comes in the wake of the college’s largest incoming class in six years and falls in accordance with the college’s pledge to keep tuition and fees under $30,000 dollars until may 2015.
The school community first was made aware of the school’s decision in a press release that was released on Jan. 8.
“We’re going to fix the costs, really watch our expenses and expand revenue in other ways,” Dr. Donald Taylor, president of Cabrini College, said, “all to allow us to keep the undergraduate experience as affordable as we can. It’s the right thing to do.”
In recent years, the school has staid true to keeping tuition and fees low, but what happens after May 2016 is still an unknown.
According to Robert Reese, vice president of Enrollment Management at Cabrini College, by that date, “there are a million things that can happen” due to the multiple influences that affect higher education, but he believes Cabrini will do anything it can to keep tuition as low as possible.
With tuition being capped, less money will be going into the school.
“Without the school increasing tuition, the school will potentially lose revenue,” Reese said, “if we make less revenue it makes us have to be more smart about how we spend our money.”
Taylor seems to agree with Reese, and believes that if the school works at diversifying other streams of income, other than tuition, such as aggressively going after grants and fundraising opportunities, the school should remain in good fiscal shape.
Jonathan A. Strout, director of guidance at Washington Township High School, Washington Township, N.J., believes that lowering the price could actually raise revenue for Cabrini.
“I do think some students and parents rule schools out right out of the gate by looking at the sticker price,” Strout said, “seeing that a school has a cap or feeling like a school is offering a good deal would make a difference.”
Regardless of the revenue-building possibilities that the change has, the main focus of Taylor and the board of trustees seems to not be about the incoming students, but rather maintaining the students that are here already.
Once a week, Taylor eats lunch in Cavs corner and has gotten a chance to talk to many students who have expressed their fear of inability to pay.
“My point is by having half of our students being first generation or low economic backgrounds any increase is a struggle,” Taylor, who resonates with these students, said, “if the students are struggling to pay what they are now, my argument is if we do raise tuition we might lose them.”
