It’s likely to cost more to attend Vincennes University the next couple of years, but officials say that students having to pay more is necessary to maintain the high-level of education they’ll receive.
President Dick Helton said the university has made great strides to raise the quality of its programs, a fact reflected in the high-enrollment numbers reported in the last year.
“We want to keep moving forward, not backward,” he said. “We’ve made an investment in the university and our students have made an investment in us, and we don’t want to let them down.
“A Vincennes University degree has value in the marketplace, and we don’t want anything to happen to devalue it.”
The university will hold a public hearing on the proposed 3.8-percent tuition increase for each of the next two school years beginning at 11 a.m. Monday in Room 167 of the Curtis G. Shake Learning Resources Center.
The university’s board of trustees is scheduled to meet at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday in the Fort Sackville Rooms in the Isaac K. Beckes Student Union, with a vote on the proposal on the agenda.
Phil Rath, VU’s vice president for financial services and government relations, said the proposed increase was basically inevitable after the state Legislature reduced funding for higher education this year.
“At the end of the day, we just thought the increase was the best thing to do,” he said. “We still have to maintain our facilities, operate the university, and pay our staff.
“And even with the increase, we’re still going to have the second-lowest tuition among all the state-supported colleges.”
Rath said 60-percent of the university’s programs provide technical training of one kind or another and the cost of providing those classes is higher than for liberal arts classes.
“Basically, what we’re doing now is training the next generation of workers,” he said. “If we want that workforce to be productive and competitive in the world economy, we have to invest in their education.”
Included in the increase is funding to repair and renovate buildings.
“One percent of the increase goes to that,” Rath said. “The ‘R & R’ money was stripped out of the state budget and we have to find some way to make that up.”
The increase is higher than the recommendation made by the state Commission for Higher Education, which “encouraged” the state’s public schools not to raise tuition by more than 3.5 percent over the next two years. The commission said its recommendation was intended to keep college affordable.
The commission recommended VU limit any increase to no more than 2.5 percent
Vincennes University was listed in the category of “primary access” schools, meaning that it’s student population included a “high proportion of low-income students.”
“Our student population does tend to include a high percentage of first-generation college students who don’t have a family-support system they can call on when they need to,” Rath said. “So, what we do is provide counselors and programs that can provide that help them when there’s a problem.
“That’s an investment we make because we want our students to succeed once they enroll,” he said. “And the money to make that kind of investment to help those students has to come from somewhere (else) if the Legislature isn’t going to provide it.”
Rath said that while the increase is higher than what the commission recommended, he doesn’t foresee any future repercussions.
“In fact, I think what we’re going to see next January (when the General Assembly reconvenes) is a review of how the funding formula has affected all the schools,” he said. “I think a lot of legislators have looked at what impact the new budget is having on higher education and want to review it.”
Copyright ©2025 Vincennes Sun Commercial