NAU Budget Cuts Could Possibly Affect Tuition Prices

Young children are raised with the notion that they have to go to college to get a degree in order to get a job, and the price of college has risen drastically in the past decade. The cost of tuition and books has sky-rocked, and students are struggling to pay to get a higher education to get the degree and get the dream job. While some students get scholarships or government assistance, others could be working and paying their way through school, without any sort of assistance.

Arizona in state kids, out of state, and WUE (Western Undergraduate Exchange), and International students all pay a different amount of money to attend Northern Arizona University. What brings a good portion of students to NAU is the tuition lock. The cost of tuition for out of state students is significantly higher than in state students. “I pay $10,820 dollars a semester for tuition, which totals out to $21,640 dollars a year,” said Becca Fagenson, a freshman undergraduate from Virginia.

This could possibly change in the upcoming year due to the budget cuts that NAU has recently installed. In the past NAU guaranteed students a four-year price lock on tuition, meaning that the university couldn’t raise tuition prices on students as they went through their four years. This could also be affected by the budget cuts. Not only will out of state kids be affected by this, but in state and WUE kids could possibly be impacted by this as well.

“Currently I pay $4995.00 dollars a semester. That’s $9990.00 dollars a year for tuition. If the budget cuts affect the tuition lock, I am going to have to take out more loans,” said Brooke Graham, a sophomore in state undergraduate student.

Students like Graham who take out loans to help pay for college are going to be facing the same challenges if the tuition lock is changed. WUE (Western Undergraduate Exchange) is a program that makes the Western United States pay less than out of state kids for tuition. The program includes the states of Hawaii, Alaska, California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

“If the tuition lock goes away, it’s going to affect my loans tremendously,” said Hailey Hendrick, junior undergraduate student from California, a participant of the WUE program. “I pay $6840.00 dollars a semester, totaling out to $13,680.00 a year for WUE. This is one reason why I came to NAU because WUE and the tuition lock made it possible for me to afford school without taking on a tremendous amount of debt,” Hendrick said.

The tuition lock possibly going away will also affect the international students. The international students pay the in state tuition prices for the international program, and if the cost of tuition changes, this may affect how many international students come to the university to study.

“Part of our program is that we pay in state Arizona tuition to study abroad here at NAU. The possible tuition costs changing won’t affect me since I’m going home after this semester, but it could affect international students in the future,” said Lisa LaBianca, a junior Swiss exchange student.

The only thing left now to do is wait and see if the tuition lock changes and if that affects tuition prices for NAU.