Bethel board approves six-percent tuition increase as work college transition looms
Bethel board approves six-percent tuition increase as work college transition looms
As of now, scholarships won’t cover the nearly $2,000 upcharge that’s set to fund employee wages and retirement benefits.
During October’s annual fall board meetings, the Bethel College board of directors proposed and passed a six-percent increase in tuition.
As of now, scholarships issued by the institution won’t increase with tuition. Students will be expected to pay that extra six percent — which comes out to $1,911 based on the 2022-2023 figure — as leadership promotes the school’s Career Pathways program as it continues its transition into a work college.
Because Bethel is a non-profit organization, balancing the budget means balancing the college’s revenue and expenses. One of the things that can fluctuate because of the budget is tuition, sometimes increasing by a few percentage points to allow for the predicted expenses of the upcoming year.
“What we do is we only go one year at a time,” President Jon Gering said. “We work forwards in terms of planning our revenues and expenses for the next fiscal year. It always invites quite a bit of uncertainty because we’re trying to build a model based on what we anticipate is going to happen and what we think we can make happen.”
Just as the cost of most goods and services has risen in recent years, so has the cost of providing for students both on and off campus. The cost of providing food, heating and cooling, water, electricity, health insurance, cyber insurance, and other necessities is rising — and the budget has to account for that.
“We’re doing [the] best that we can, but it’s tricky to try to guess what’s going to happen when we’re unsure,” said Jayna Bertholf, VP for Business and Management. “We create the budget as a plan for how to succeed in fulfilling our mission.”
While creating the budget, the administration must account for a myriad of issues, with the most important being the upfront cost for prospective students.
“We know that higher education is always expensive and I know that’s always a concern,” Gering said. “It’s a concern for us as well. And the much broader context is that the amount of debt and student loan debt for undergraduates in the U.S. has continued to rise.”
Another critical issue is employee recruitment and retention. A certain portion of the budget is devoted to paying the Bethel faculty and staff, including professors, coaches, maintenance workers, student workers, and everything in between. Two percent of the increase in tuition will fund an increase in staff salary, while point-five percent of it will go toward retirement benefits. The other 3.5 percent will assist with general student welfare.
It’s up to Bertholf to determine the change in tuition to account for these costs and others in combination with the school’s expected number of students, both new and returning. This year, it’s plus-six percent. And Gering explained that the residential experience — where the “real learning happens” — makes up for this amount.
“We know in the present day that any student could choose to stay at home and enroll in Western Governors University or Southern New Hampshire University or any number of online-only [colleges] that would give them the knowledge they need to have a degree,” Gering said.
“But that’s not what we do here at Bethel,” he added. “Knowledge isn’t enough. There are other things that need to happen in order for our students to reach human flourishing. … And we think if we get all that together and aligned in the hearts and minds of students, that we’ll have made a contribution to society.”
2023 will mark (at least) the 10th straight year that Bethel has increased its tuition with an increase that roughly matches the total increase over the last two academic years combined. Despite this trend, Bethel still falls below the average tuition price in America, which is just north of $41,500.