NMU Follows Tech and Raises Tuition

A day after Michigan Tech raises tuition to try to cope with less and less state funding, Northern Michigan University does the same.

The NMU Board of Trustees has approved a raise of almost identical size to Tech’s.

Tuition will be up 5.3% this fall for all NMU students.

That comes out to $376 more for the year for full-time, in-state undergrads.

NMU has seen budget cuts every year since 2002.

But there seems to be a changing of opinion that the school can’t rely on budget cuts alone anymore.

NMU President Dr. Les Wong says no one at the school — not him, not the board, not anyone on the faculty or staff — wanted to raise tuition.

But he says with the years of budget cuts, it’s getting to the point where if the school wants to preserve the quality of programs it has, they didn’t have much of a choice.

But thanks to more financial aid, nearly 1 in 3 students will have smaller tuition bills.

Dr. Wong says about 3,300 NMU students will receive enough in new scholarship money to mean they’ll pay less in tuition this year than last.

He believes the return on investment for students will still be strong.

Even with this increase, NMU is going to remain the 2nd most affordable of Michigan’s Public 15 colleges.

If the school gets federal stimulus money this fall, it’ll go directly to the student accounts of undergrads.