Tuition at Clemson University is going up by $129 per semester for South Carolina residents and $535 for students from out-of-state, an increase of 1.75 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
The school's Board of Trustees approved thehike, along with higher rates for housing and meals, Friday.
That makes the sticker price for in-state undergraduates$7,485 a semester, and $18,362 for students from out of state.
University officials note, however, that students from South Carolina on average pay only about 36 percent of the cost of tuition because of grants and scholarships, and more than half of all Clemson students graduate without any student loan debt.
“I’m always sensitive to cost – the cost of tuition, the cost of education,” Clemson President Jim Clements told reporters after the board’s vote. “But one thing we provide at Clemson is super-high quality. So I hope that our students know that we’re a top 25 public university and they’re getting a great return on their investment. They’re getting a high-quality education.
“We do the best we can to keep costs as low as we can.”
The tuition increase was the lowest among increases of the seven state institutions of higher education that have approved tuition rates for 2018-19, according to figures compiled by Clemson, not counting satellite campuses. Only USC Upstate, whose tuition is going up 1.5 percent, was lower.
Students have come to expect increases each year.
“Tuition’s been steadily going up,” said Cole Morgan, a Clemson business management major from Chapin. “It certainly hasn’t gone down anytime recently. I don’t think it’s going anytime soon.”
Friday’s news, he said, was “not good to hear, but it’s not a surprise.”
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But the tuition increases come at a time when average South Carolina families are increasingly being priced out of the state’s research universities, according to a report released Thursday by the state Commission on Higher Education.
The median family income of students at tClemson, USC and the Medical University of South Carolina rose from $41,360 in 1997 (in 2015 dollars) to $72,210 in 2015, the report says.
Meanwhile, state funding for Clemson fell from $112.8 million in 2007-08 to $80 million in 2016-17, according to another report by CHE.
Clemson officials said they were pleased with the increased state support in this year’s budget, which helped keep the tuition increase lower than it would have been otherwise.
Earlier this month, the University of South Carolina raised its tuition by 2.9 percent, and less for some of its campuses, which the school said was its smallest tuition increase in 20 years.
But South Carolina’s colleges and universities rank seventh-highest in the nation in tuition costs, according to the Southern Regional Education Board.
And although Clemson’s new tuition increase is below the current rate of inflation, as calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, tuition costs have increased seven-fold since the late 1980’s, the CHE report notes.
Tuition among the state’s higher education institutions jumped by 761 percent between 1987 and 2015. That was well above the rate of the increase in national healthcare costs (240 percent), housing in South Carolina (130 percent) and median incomes in the state (85 percent), according to the report.
Meanwhile, the percentage of first-generation college students in the state has fallen steadily over the past 20 years, the report says.
And the percentage of South Carolina high school graduates age 17-19 entering higher education fell from 83.5 percent in 2006 to 76 percent in 2016.
The lottery-funded scholarships, which once more than covered tuition costs, now cover only about half the cost of tuition on average, according to the CHE report.
The CHE has been arguing that the state’s colleges and universities should cut expenses before raising tuition.
“While the CHE understands the difficult decisions that universities must make when planning their budgets each year, as college costs continue to rise, and students look for relief from crippling debt, we should be focused not on raising tuition but instead on cutting the total cost of college, reining in university spending and opening up the books across our university system so taxpayers can see how tax dollars are being spent,” CHE Chairman Tim Hofferth said.
Clemson officials point out that Clemson trimmed its expenses over the past year by more than $13 million through better sourcing and procurement, reallocating $5.1 million to academics and “mission criticalinvestments." The university’s costs, adjusted for inflation, have decreased by 16 percent over the past decade, Clemson officials said.
But the tuition increase was needed because of higher health and retirement costs mandated by the state, to undertake campus safety and student life improvements, for infrastructure replacement and renovations, and for “critical investments in quality” to maintain its standing as one of the top 25 public universities in the country, as rated by U.S. News & World Report.
Tuition isn’t the only cost of attending Clemson that went up. For first-year students, staying in a dorm or student apartment will increase by between 1.7 percent and 4.7 percent, depending on which type housing. That amounts to an increase of $48 to $145 per semester.
For continuing students, on-campus housing will go up between 4.2 percent and 4.5 percent, or between $116 and $171 a semester.
Clemson's housing costs remain in the middle of the pack among universities in the Southeast of similar size, according to the university's calculations.
The cost of meals is going up by 2.9 percent to 4 percent, with the average cost of a meal on the “unlimited” plan at around $5.
Some students took a philosophical view of the rate increases.
Parker Tilley, secretary of public relations for Clemson Undergraduate Student Government and a finance and accounting major from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said he believes the administration has worked hard to save money and keep costs as low as possible.
“Clemson has been ranked as one of the best return-on-investment universities that you get,” he said. “And while the cost increases, at the end of the day we still want to make sure that Clemson is a top tier school.”
