By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The tortuous trip the state budget has taken on the way to the governor’s desk for signing forced the BGSU Board of Trustees to punt and approve a place holder budget today (6-26-2025) in what had been scheduled as their last meeting of the biennium. Now the trustees will return to campus for a special meeting Aug. 28 to pass the final two-year budget.
Chief Financial Officer Sheri Stoll said the budget deliberations by the Ohio House and Senate were not concluded in time to meet the deadline for preparing the new budget for the trustees.
The $60 billion state budget got through the conference committee in the early morning hours of Wednesday, and now will go to Gov. Mike DeWine for his signature any possible line item vetoes.
[RELATED: Here is what is in the Ohio GOP budget bill going to Gov. DeWine’s desk]
Without the necessary information from the state budget, Stoll instead presented last year’s budget. The 2025 budget called for spending $467,396,375 with revenues of $468,053,963.
Then when the state budget is finalized, a new budget will be drawn up, and trustees will meet to act on it.
The trustees also approved a resolution that permits the administration to set the tuition for the incoming cohort of students “to the extent permitted by Ohio law” once the budget has been finalized. The fees for the current cohort, the seventh since BGSU introduced the Falcon Guarantee, is $6,962.40, in tuition and fees.
The trustees also set the cost of the new hybrid Doctorate in Occupational Therapy as $90,000 for the six semester program.
A special course fees for the new AI + X program were set at the meeting. The new program allows students to pair studies in artificial intelligence with a variety of majors.
In order for the students in AI + X programs to gain knowledge, and experience, “we need to provide them with access to those tools and the ability to use them,” she said.
To that end, the university is in the process of negotiating an agreement to give students access to a platform that includes multiple AI products.
The students would have to pay $40 a month to access that platform. The fee, Stoll said, would be the same no matter how many courses that would require it the student is taking in the semester.
Also approved were a variety of other special fees. Those are in addition to special fees approved in February.
Stoll also explained that as one of the first institutions that established a tuition guarantee, it pioneered certain approaches which proved not to work well.
That includes locking the amount students would pay in special fees.
Keeping track of those fees, which can change annually, proved extremely burdensome and unwieldy for the administration.
The resolution passed by the trustees Thursday takes those special fees out of the guarantee, so students will possibly need to pay more as the cost is adjusted.
