MTSU Sidelines

Issue date: 7/23/08 Section: Features

Media Credit: Michael Stone Elena Serrano, junior marketing major, applies for financial aid outside the financial aid office to hopefully ease the pressures of rising tuition.

Every semester, students empty their bank accounts or take out loans to pay MTSU thousands of dollars to attend school. Most students do not ask where their money is going because it's usually assumed that you're paying for a college education.

However, now that there is a 6 percent tuition increase for the upcoming school year, students are starting to wonder, where does my tuition go?

"I assume my tuition goes to classes and education but I never really questioned the issue because I just knew to go to college you have to pay," says Kyla Holder, a sophomore interior design major.

For the incoming freshman class, the estimated tuition cost is $2,885 a semester if the student is going to school full time, is in-state and is not living in a campus dorm. If a student comes to MTSU this fall from out of state, the estimated cost for them is $8,485 a semester. If a freshman lives in a dorm, they are also required to pay for housing and for a meal plan, which can get up to about $6- or $7,000 a semester.

Mike Gower, vice president for business finance, lays out the following explanation on how MTSU's money was made and distributed for the 2007-2008 school year.

MTSU made revenue of $235,730,200. The majority of this money, or 51 percent, came from tuition costs and fees, 43 percent came from state appropriations, or money set aside by the government for universities, and the remaining six percent came from other sources.

All of these revenue sources are put together in a general fund and then distributed within various expenses. With students' tuition payments totalling a little more than half of all the revenue the university obtains, it plays a crucial part in providing for our expenses as a university.

MTSU's expenses are distributed between five different areas. The majority of revenue, 63 percent or $146,652,800, goes to academics, which includes instruction, research and academic support. These costs pay professors, fund the library provide and classroom necessities.

Academics is an area a lot students are concerned with, and many people might agree this area should be where most of their tuition goes.

Continued...

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