The board of trustees decided in February to increase the cost of living for students on campus. New and returning Otterbein students will be paying an extra 2 percent for room and 1.5 percent for board, a hike of about $165 a semester.
This is an additional raise from last year's increase of the cost of traditional housing by 7 percent and board by 2 percent.
Jim Rutherford, chairman of the finance committee, said at the February board of trustees meeting concerning the increase, “These recommendations are based on peer institutions and what they’re doing now.”
Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings, vice president of business affairs at Otterbein, said that this increase was due to an analysis of rates at other universities.
“What we’ll look at every year when we look at our rates, we want to just make sure that we’re not outpricing the market,” said Vazquez-Skillings. “We like to be on the lower end in terms of the total class so for us it provides some context and we’d like the [board of trustees] to be able to see that information but the key drivers for those are the food costs for dining, so that rate increases based on food cost. For board, it’s just based on operations cost for the dorms.”
Vazquez-Skillings said tuition, which accounts for the largest expense for students, was frozen due to the board’s discussions on affordability.
Otterbein is not the only university that has recently raised room and board and froze tuition.
In June, Ohio State University’s board of trustees approved a 4.1 percent increase in room and a 4.3 percent increase on board for the 2014-2015 academic year. The OSU board also voted to freeze tuition for in-state undergraduates and graduates.
A new student life fee was introduced to Otterbein students last year which now costs undergraduates $100 a year.
The board reported a deficit of $150,000 in the budget at the March meeting, which was a significant drop from the past meeting.
