GW announced Wednesday a 4.4 percent tuition increase for next year – the lowest hike in 13 years.
Announcing the 2001-02 budget to student leaders at a meeting Wednesday night, GW President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg said alumni fundraising and increased gifts helped cut .1 percent from last year’s tuition increase of 4.5 percent.
“We have been working diligently to raise more from alumni and other endowments,” Trachtenberg said. “These kinds of gifts make it possible to keep tuition as low as it is while still adding to the GW experience.”
The treasurer’s office will present the budget to the board of trustees Friday morning.
A large portion of the extra $24 million from tuition increases goes to the Gelman Library, financial aid and the Law School.
The proposed budget for next year allots Gelman Library an additional $1 million for next year – an increase three times the $250,000 boost it usually receives, Trachtenberg said. Financial aid will receive an increase of $6.4 million, while the Law School receives $3.4 million more for renovations and a $1.3 million increase for operations.
Trachtenberg said most of the extra financial aid goes to undergraduates, although he did not provide breakdowns for undergraduate and graduate students.
Student Association President David Burt said he was “very happy to see financial aid getting an increase.”
Other areas receiving increased funding included the Honors Program, which got $400,000 more, the GW International Experience exchange program, which received $1.1 million more, and staff salary increases, which total $4.9 million.
GW limited technology increases to $585,000.
The proposed budget corresponded with the SA’s “Student Budgetary
Priorities Resolution” in which the SA recommended that the University
make, “academic technology, financial aid, additional classroom space and
improving and expanding facilities its highest budgetary priorities.”
“Tuition increases happen,” Burt said. “It’s good to know that (the University is) being moderate and keeping the increase low.”
Trachtenberg said he hopes that the tuition increase is successful and that students will let him know what they think.
“More important than money is the investment of four years of their lives,” Trachtenberg said. “If they are going to invest that time, we want it to be in the best environment that it can be.”
