Tuesday, March 12, 2002
YSU room and board charges could jump dramatically because of an auditor's recommendation.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Going to class for students living in Youngstown State University dormitories amounts to no more than a 10-minute walk.
Heck, you can set the alarm for 7:50 a.m. and be in your seat before your professor arrives for your 8 a.m. class.
The trek to class will be a bit more challenging for dozens of students next school year under a housing plan being reviewed by university trustees, however.
YSU wants to house 150 upper-class students in the Woods of Liberty apartments on Logangate Road beginning the fall semester in August.
The contract with the Liberty apartments will run through the 2002-03 academic year, said Jack Fahey, YSU housing director.
New complex: YSU plans to open a 400-student, $18 million apartment complex on Wick Oval adjacent to campus in August 2003, a year later than initially planned.
Rather than turn away potential residential students, YSU developed the one-year alternative housing plan with hopes that many of the students then would flow into the new campus apartment complex when it opens in the fall of 2003.
Fahey said the majority of students expected to live in the Liberty apartments have their owns cars and will be able to get themselves to campus. He said YSU also will ask the Western Reserve Transit Authority to consider direct service from the apartments to campus.
The university estimates the one-year arrangement with the Liberty apartments will cost about $500,000. Students will pay $3,700. YSU would need to recruit 136 students to break even.
Meanwhile, Fahey said room and board charges for students in YSU's five current residence halls could increase about 32 percent over the next six years.
Recommendation: A recent audit recommended that YSU housing services be solely responsible for paying millions of dollars in debt still owed for construction of Lyden House and Cafaro House dormitories. In the past, YSU housing funds and the university's general fund split debt payments.
Fahey said the only way for housing to pay the debt itself is to increase revenue, "and the only way to do that is to increase our fees to our students."
Fahey said YSU's annual room and board fee of $4,970 is among the lowest in Ohio. He recommends increasing the fee 7 percent to $5,300 next school year and then 5 percent in each of the next five years to $6,720 by 2008.
"Obviously we'd like to offer it at as low of a price as possible, but the auditor's recommendation is important as well," he said.
He said it's difficult raising fees so dramatically at a time when YSU is trying to attract more students to university housing.
"We need to be very careful about that," he added.
YSU trustees may vote on the fee increase this week as part of a resolution that also is expected to include a tuition increase.
cole@vindy.com