Last month, the Board of Regents at the University of Michigan approved a $1,100 increase per term for its full-time MBA program at the Ross School of Business. The tuition increase, which will take effect in the fall, represents a 4.4 percent rise for in-state students and a 4 percent rise for out-of-state students. Meanwhile, the Board of Regents for the University of California system earlier this week approved a proposal that rules out tuition hikes for that system’s graduate business schools, at least for this year.
As reported by Bloomberg BusinessWeek on June 21st, two members of the six-person board at the University of Michigan voted against the tuition hike. “The continued raising of tuition is not sustainable,” Regent Denise Ilitch said in a statement. “If we were as good at raising revenue streams as we are at raising tuition, our students would be far better off.”
With the tuition increases, the total coast of the program for in-state residents will now be almost $105,000. The cost of Ross’s Executive MBA program will also increase by $5,000, to $136,000 for residents and $141,000 for nonresidents, an increase of 3.8 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively, Bloomberg BW reports.
In California, meanwhile, students at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business dodged a proposed 8.5 percent tuition hike, at least for another year, Bloomberg BW reported earlier this week.
In November, outgoing UC President Mark Yudof proposed increases to the supplemental fees students pay in 29 graduate professional degree programs, including business programs. The proposed increase for MBA students at Haas was $3,256 on supplemental tuition of $38,548. California Governor Jerry Brown called on Yudof to revisit the proposed increases, calling them unseemly amid recent sales and income tax increases in the state.
In the revised proposal, which was approved July 17th, tuition hikes were limited to four new professional programs and four underfunded nursing programs. Business school programs will be unaffected, Bloomberg BW reports.
UC Spokesperson Dianne Klein called it a balancing act, telling Bloomberg BW that going forward the other graduate programs will need additional revenue to maintain quality. “You want to have a top-notch program in order to attract the best graduate students. But you also don’t want to price yourself out of the market, or alienate the people who make decisions about state funding for the University of California,” she said.
According to Klein, Yudof concluded that most of the programs can get by for one year at existing fee levels, but that it is not a long-term sustainable proposition.
Read the complete Bloomberg BW piece on Ross.
Read the complete Bloomberg BW piece on the UC system.
