On the cost of Education

[Belsnickel]

Okay, so here is some fun stuff. Now, it should be noted that out of the public universities in Virginia, JMU is one of the least expensive to attend. So these numbers are low, but because the school follows some of the same trends you will see the same sort of increases around the country with regard to where these increases are coming from.


This is a history of the tuition, room, and board from the 2006-2007 school year to present. This allows you to see the tuition increases, as well as the room, board, and auxiliary fee increases. The room rent and board (meals) are their own auxiliary funds that are sustained by those charges and other fees they charge directly (charges for damages in housing, revenue other than meal plans for food).

This is the pie chart used to show how the Education & General funds (tuition and state money) are allocated. I will see if I can find something that breaks it down a little more:


And this is the chart for the auxiliary fee break down:


It is, of course, interesting that they have student activity listed in the comprehensive aux fee, but there is also the specific student activity fee. Of course, the $48 fee is only charges to full-time students, so that may be the difference because there are certain things only FT students have access to, and that may account for the difference. Student activities would be money going to clubs, the recreation center, things like that. Anyway, here is the budget breakdown:


I'm not going to spend the time to go to prior budgets and make comparisons. I can tell you, though, that the percentages of revenue sources and the expenditures has remained fairly stagnant. The only real change is a consistently decreasing percentage of revenue coming from the general fund, which is what the General Assembly allocates to us.

And, in case anyone is wondering about me providing this information, as a public university all of this is public record. All but the first image are actually pulled directly from our website. The first one is me condensing information taken from multiple files that can be obtained from our website.