CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Even though tuition and fee rates at West Virginia University have gone up by more than 150 percent since 1998, an economics professor and higher education policy analyst said the school’s costs remain affordable by comparison.
“Tuition in West Virginia remains much lower than tuition in other places,” said Sandy Baum, who also works as a consultant for the College Board, on Monday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Last week, WVU’s Board of Governors approved the latest tuition increases for the University’s students. Starting later this year, in-state students will pay approximately 6 percent more, while the cost for out-of-state students will climb by 4 percent.
According to numbers from WVU, that means the tuition for students who are from West Virginia will be $3,228 per semester. In 1998, those in-state students paid $1,258 each semester.
Baum said such increases are happening across the United States as schools deal with less and less state money.
“The issue is not so much that institutions are spending more money to educate students, because that’s not going up very fast,” she said. “It’s that the state is not giving them the money to pay those (other) costs, so students are having to pay them instead.”
Even with higher rates, Baum said college still pays off in the long run.
“The difference in your earnings if you get that college degree and if you don’t is so high that, even with the rising levels of tuition, the cost of not going to college is much higher than the cost of going to college,” she said.