By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
Orientation day and a new crop of Rutgers freshmen tours the campus in Newark. Down the street they’ll study cardiac sonograms, dental hygiene and more at the university’s School of Health Related Professions. However, the tuition hike here almost gave some kids a coronary — from $345 to more than $550 a credit. It’s a jaw-dropping 60 percent increase, compared to a 2.3 percent hike for other Rutgers undergrads.
“I don’t know how are people going to pay for this. Especially if you want educated people, you have to make it more affordable so more people can go to school,” said health student Catherine Espinal.
“Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean that’s how college is. I don’t know whether that’s fair or not, but it’s just how it is,” health student Mike Streifer said.
But unhappy families complained — and Rutgers decided to fix it by offering about 100 new students at the health school special grants to bring the tuition hike in line with the 2.3 percent increase paid by everyone else. A spokesman admitted it didn’t give families enough of a heads-up, saying “…our efforts to communicate such information have been insufficient…” and that Rutgers “…is reviewing tuition to determine an appropriate rate.” The 60 percent surprised a former Board of Governors member.
“I was on the Board of Governors for five and a half years and we never had anything approaching that magnitude,” Gordon MacInnes said.
MacInnes says Rutgers ranks among the most expensive four-year state universities across the nation. One study notes since 2008 in New Jersey four-year colleges and universities saw state aid cut by 22 percent and tuition rise by 14 percent. That adds up to more than $2,000 a student — while financial aid’s declined.
“So the percentage of a struggling family’s tuition charges that will be covered with the aid grant has been diminishing each year,” he said.
The average debt that students graduate with in New Jersey is $28,000. It’s too high and its something we need to tackle, and we need to tackle right away,” Giancarlo Tello said.
Tello protested tuition increases at Rutgers and now sits on a special state commission studying how to control rapidly rising higher education costs.
“We look at all our programs, we look at how our institutions are spending the money, we look at the state’s investment in it and how it’s affecting our future generations,” he said.
A university spokesman says next year Rutgers School of Health Related Professions will be sure to give students about any tuition hikes in a more timely fashion to help avoid cases of last-minute sticker shock.