While current NIU students have locked-in tuition rates, that doesn’t mean they won’t be paying more for school in the near future.

Student fees and room and board rates will increase starting in July. Before Spring Break, an NIU Board of Trustees subcommittee voted to recommend the increases for fiscal year 2010, which is from July 1, 2009 until June 30, 2010. The measure is likely to pass during the next Board of Trustees meeting.

Universities across the country are struggling to pay their bills because of the recession, and NIU is not immune. And, as a state university in the debt-ridden state of Illinois, budgets were cut at NIU late last year.

Student fees will increase an average of nearly 4 percent for students with NIU health insurance and close to 5 percent for students without it. The average room and board increase will be 8.5 percent.

Trustee John Butler is a member of the subcommittee – called the Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee – that approved the measure. Butler said he respects the process in place – notably the gauging of student reaction – that determines these types of increases.

“Given the current economic situation and state funding, I think it was necessary,” Butler said of the committee’s recommendation of fee increases, adding he “was surprised that the recommendations came in as low as they did.”

It is all but guaranteed the board will approve the increases, he said.

Similar fee escalations are fairly routine, Butler said, but are higher than in previous years as a likely result of the recession. Last time around, student fee increases for fiscal year 2009 were an average of 2.88 percent for students with insurance and an average of 4.19 percent for students without it.

Adam Brown, freshman political science major, categorized the increases as a “necessary evil.”

“They have to keep funding the university,” he said. “Realistically, you don’t want the quality of the education to go even worse than it has. I think people will have to accept it, regardless of whether they agree with it.”

Sophomore English major Alexandra Orrison agrees that the increases are basically necessary. “I probably won’t notice it much until I go to pay student loans,” she said.

Unfortunately for incoming students in particular, these may not be the last increases the board will be voting on in the imminent future.

“I would be surprised if we did not see proposed increases in tuition,” Butler said.

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