By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The BGSU Board of Trustees acted on the cost of room and board for the incoming class of students.
According to the Falcon Tuition Guarantee, first year students’ tuition and room and board is locked in for the four years they are on campus.
Room rates will increase an average of 2.65 percent across the four tiers of residence halls. The tiers are determined by the number of amenities. Kreischer is now the only tier 1 residence hall. It is the only residence without air conditioning. The least expensive room is a standard double room in Kreischer. The most expensive room is double room with a single resident, a super single in a tier 3 residence hall. The tier 3 dorms are Centennial, Falcon Heights, and Founders.
There will be no increase in the standard double, the rate the university reports to the state. Incoming students will pay $3,380 a semester the same as returning second year students. The most expensive room will be $4,900 a semester. The largest increase will be 8 percent for a double room in the Greek Village, bringing the cost to $4,300.
Inflation, Chief Financial Officer Sheri Stoll told the trustees finance committee, is putting pressure on meal plan prices. That will result in increases in the cost of all the meal plans. The Bronze will go up 3.5 percent to $2,167 a semester; Silver will increase 2 percent to $2,541, and the Gold will rise 8 percent to $2920. The Gold plan now includes three meals a day for seven days to meet federal regulations.
The community plan, which is available for students, staff, faculty, and community members, will be $428, an 8 percent increase.
The Bronze Plan includes 85 swipes a semester and the Silver 115 swipes. Stoll reported that 56 percent of students take the Bronze plan with 32 percent selecting the Silver plan and 12 percent opting for the Gold plan.
She praised Chartwells, the company that contracts to operate food service, for the company’s efforts to controlling costs while maintaining quality and variety.
Part of that is keeping food waste to the minimum, she said.
The trustees also acted on a variety of course fees.
The board approved a new course fee of $40 for students who use the Adobe Creative Cloud, a suite of software applications. Stoll said the software has been significantly upgraded. It is now Adobe Creative Cloud “turbo-charged.”
With that comes significant cost increases including an anticipated 24 percent increase next year when Stoll estimates the university will pay $142,000 a year for an enterprise license.
At this point, it was determined students should share the cost.
The application is used by a wide range of students in the fine arts, graphic design, engineering and architecture. About 1,400 students use the software for one or more courses. More than 160 courses required Adobe Creative Cloud.
The fee will only be charged once a semester to a student regardless of how many courses in which they are using the technology.
If students were to individually pay for a license, it would be $20 a month, or $240 a year.
When one trustee seemed suggest looking at an alternative, fellow trustees Willa Ebersole and Mizell Stewart III both stated that the Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard. It’s been that way since it was first introduced, Stewart said.
And Chief Information Officer John Ellinger said that Apple has refused to sell a license that would be shared by more than one institution.
Also, in the packet of fees were those associated with engineering programs. These fees, Stoll said, have already been charged, mostly at the same or similar amounts, for existing courses that are now being offered in the new engineering programs — Robotics Engineering, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering and Computer Engineering. Because of the switch, the trustees need to approve the fees again.
The final group were mostly for the aviation program. These fees are “pass through” — the university collects the money and then passes it along to North Star Companies, which does flight training for BGSU. The money is handled this way, Stoll explained, so that students can use financial aid money to help pay for the fees.
The aviation fees range from $3,255 for flight training to $17,161 for Advanced Commercial Flight training.
The aviation fees are not covered by the Falcon Tuition Guarantee.
Two new majors approved
The trustees also approved two new majors: a Bachelor of Arts in World Languages and Cultures and a Bachelor’s Degree in General Studies.
World Languages and Cultures consolidates six separate bachelor’s programs into a single degree. Students will have the choice of six specializations — Classics, French, German, Latin Studies, Spanish, and Russian — within that degree.
Interim Provost Glen Davis noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a growth in demand for workers able to translate and interpret and found that multilingual workers earn 11 percent more than their monolingual peers.
Davis said the university hopes with more promotion of the programs, more students will enroll. Currently 31 students are enrolled in the existing degree programs.
The only new course offering will be a capstone course in how to apply language skills in the workplace.
A new Bachelor of General Studies was also approved. The program is aimed at people who have some college credits but not enough for a particular degree.
Davis noted that 386 students have at least 105 of the 120 credits needed for a degree, but have not been enrolled since 2023. Other students are enrolled but are not able to complete the requirements for the major they are in. Others have associate degrees. And some dropped out of college with credits. Davis said that 1.4 million Ohioans have some college but no degrees.
“The most expensive degree we have is the one that a student doesn’t complete,” he said.
The program will be located at Firelands and can be completed with both online and in-person classes.
(BG Independent will post more stories on other action taken by the trustees.)
