COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – A little more than a month before fall classes begin, Ohio State University plans to increase tuition for its incoming freshmen.
Ohio State’s Board of Trustees will meet Friday to approve raising tuition and general fees by 3% for the coming year, according to meeting materials. It will be the seventh consecutive increase, according to the university registrar, and is the maximum raise allowed by law.
Raising tuition and general fees by 3% will cost Ohio residents $12,859.55 per year, not including housing costs or additional fees for specific fields of study. Continuing in-state undergraduate students will see no increases, while out-of-state students will have higher non-resident surcharges.
Graduate students will see a 3.8% raise for base tuition, and non-resident graduate students’ additional surcharge will be 4.2% higher.
The planned tuition hike comes two weeks after Gov. Mike DeWine signed the state’s biennial budget, finalizing state funding for public colleges and universities. The state share of instruction per each university has not been released, but the four line-item budget appropriations all mark increases from the previous fiscal year.
The university’s meeting materials note inflation and the lowering of state funding as reasons for the increased costs.
Ohio State’s funding, expressed as a ratio of state contribution to student tuition, has flipped to be tuition-dominant, according to meeting materials. In 1981, state contributions accounted for 68% of funding; in 2023, that share was 25%.
Ohio State raised tuition and fees for in-state freshmen by 4.6% last May, prompting condemnation from DeWine. The increase cost $549 more per year for in-state students and $1,703 more for out-of-state students.
Under the proposed increases, in-state first-year students will pay $374 more per year. The non-resident surcharge will increase by 5.2%, or $1,269, for a total cost of $38,365. Incoming international students, who pay an additional surcharge, will pay $41,293 each year.
In 2015, the Ohio General Assembly passed a bill that allowed colleges and universities to establish undergraduate cohort tuition guarantee programs. The tuition guarantee locks in a cohort’s tuition and general fees for four years, following them from freshman to senior year.
In 2019, the law was amended to require universities to establish tuition guarantees. Ohio State started its cohort program in the 2017-2018 academic year.
Under the 2019 law, after the first year of implementation, public colleges and universities were allowed to raise tuition from cohort to cohort by up to the rate of inflation in the previous year and a half, unless otherwise specified. The state’s two-year budget adjusts that cap to 3% each academic year through spring 2025.
Other fees, including for student health insurance, elective services and licensure exams, are exempt from the 3% limit, although increases in any special fees must be approved by the Chancellor of Higher Education.
Several special fees – including a student activity fee, student union fee, COTA transit pass fee and recreational fee – haven’t increased at Ohio State in more than a decade, according to the university registrar.
Housing and dining costs will increase by 3%, according to meeting materials, while student health insurance will increase by about 1.75%.
Trustees will meet in executive session at 4 p.m. Friday, with the public meeting expected to start at 4:30 p.m. Unlike most other board meetings, the board will meet at WOSU headquarters at 1800 N. Pearl St.
The board meeting materials, which include program-specific breakdowns of fee increases, can be viewed below.