Students in 8 Pa. counties get break at YSU

By Harold Gwin

The university will need 168 new full-time students to cover the revenue loss.

YOUNGSTOWN — Residents of eight Western Pennsylvania counties can now attend Youngstown State University at the same tuition rate as Ohio residents, plus $100.

The university’s Board of Trustees has essentially eliminated the nonresident tuition surcharge on undergraduate tuition for students living in Mercer, Lawrence, Beaver, Crawford, Butler, Erie, Allegheny and Venango counties effective next fall.

In-state undergraduates pay $6,720 a year in tuition, and Western Pennsylvania residents living along the Ohio border have been paying a “nonresident tuition surcharge” of $2,692 on top of that. Now, the only additional fee will be $100 for full-time students.

Dropping the surcharge would amount to an immediate loss of nearly $1.7 million in fees paid by some 630 students already enrolled from the target area, said Thomas Maraffa, special assistant to the president. Current students from those areas will get the tuition break next fall as well.

It will take an additional 168 full-time students to make up that loss, he said.

That jump in enrollment could easily come from the eight-county targeted area as there 30,000 students in the senior class across that region this year, Maraffa said.

Maraffa said the university has a plan to attract more students from Western Pennsylvania.

Current students living there will be ambassadors because of the tuition break they will receive, and the university has 100 employees who also live in that area, he said.

On top of that, some 3,100 YSU alumni are living in Mercer and Lawrence counties, he said.

Butler County Community College recently opened a new campus in Lawrence County, and transfers from that campus to YSU four-year programs is a real possibility, Maraffa said.

YSU is also planning special events with high school guidance counselors in the targeted area, and the number of YSU admissions counselors serving that area will be increased, he said.

An advertising and marketing campaign is also ready to go, he said, noting that the new tuition rate will be at or below that offered by Slippery Rock University in Butler County and below that charged at the Penn State Shenango campus in Sharon.

Maraffa had said in the past that the revenue loss from current students getting the tuition break could be reduced if the state of Ohio can be persuaded to subsidize the out-of-state-students from the target area, just as it subsidizes in-state undergraduates, he said.

The state gives YSU about $4,800 per in-state undergraduate student.