The Board of Trustees announced the annual tuition increase and approved funding for a new a cable package in its Winter term meetings over the weekend, the College released yesterday.
The Board also voted to name the new East Wheelock residence hall after Trustee Emeritus Norman E. McCulloch, Jr. '50, and approved financial aid plans.
Tuition
The Board kept tuition increases stable from last year, by again approving an increase in tuition of 3.5 percent for the 2000-2001 academic year at their Winter term meeting last weekend in Hanover.
The 3.5 percent rise matches last year's increase of the same percentage. Last year marked the fifth consecutive decline in the rate at which the Trustees raised tuition, and was the smallest increase since 1966. The 1998-1999 tuition hike was 3.9 percent.
Tuition, room and board expenses for undergraduates will be $33,210, which represents an overall increase of 3.8 percent. To help compensate for tuition increases, the College will grant almost $30 million in undergraduate scholarship aid for 2000-2001 from its own funds, a 6.4 percent jump from last year.
The Trustees also approved other financial aid benefits, including the reduction of loan expectations on a graduated basis according to family income. This measure is estimated to lessen loan burdens of 54 percent of financial aid students.
About one-third of students receiving financial aid can reduce their loan or job portions of their aid package by now retaining the full amount of external scholarships from corporations or civic groups.
Additionally, first-year international students can expect a six percent increase in the scholarship budget.
In an interview on Sunday, King said the recent Williams College decision to freeze tuition rates because of their substantial endowment was discussed at the Board's recent meeting, although he said, "Williams is their own institution, and they have their own reasons for doing things."
"We're not following the Williams example," College President James Wright said at a faculty meeting yesterday, noting the 3.5 percent increase is comparable to other leading institutions.
Tuition for undergraduate students and graduate students in the Thayer School of Engineering for the next academic year will be $25,497, before room and board charges are added. Dartmouth Medical School tuition climbed 5.8 percent to $27,300 while tuition for the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration will be $28,740, marking a 5.9 percent increase.
A new cable package
In long anticipated news, a new cable package will be installed for next fall after the Board approved funding for its implementation, Dean of the College James Larimore said.
The next step is for the College to negotiate a contract with a local service provider, Adelphia, which he said provides a basic package.
Yet because Adelphia does not locally provide some channels that students have asked for, such as Black Entertainment Television, the College will negotiate with the company directly to add such channels to the basic package and "move ahead with it as quickly as possible," Larimore said.
In all, Larimore estimated the final package will consist of 55 to 60 channels, a generous increase from the dozen or so channels currently available in most rooms on campus.
"The tuition increase was not affected at all by the decision on cable. It will be a one time installment in the upcoming room rate," Larimore said. "The infrastructure is in large part already there, so a large part of the cost already paid."
Thus, the primary funding for the cable is included as part of the present room rate, although an operating budget may be needed to make up the difference, Larimore said.
The road to cable installation has been long and tedious. Calls for cable have surfaced as far back as January 1992, when The Dartmouth published a story entitled, "College Considers Cable Option: SA studies possibilities of installation in individual rooms." For the past two years, the Student Assembly has passed resolutions asking for full cable. In the summer of 1997 the College committee on cable began preliminary work, and that fall the Assembly appointed Matt Benedetto '00 as a student representative.
"We met continuously for the next year. There were a lot of ups and downs, and we got up to 95 percent of being able to get full cable in the winter of 1998, but it fell through because of finances," Benedetto said, noting numerous delays since then.
New dorm named
On another front, the Board voted to name the newest addition in the East Wheelock cluster after Trustee Emeritus Norman E. McCulloch, Jr. '50, who is currently the Chairman of the Rhode Island Foundation, one of the nation's largest community foundations. Slated to open this fall, McCulloch Hall will accommodate 80 students.
McCulloch has served as President of the Alumni Council, Chair of the Dartmouth Alumni Fund and National Chair of the five-year "Campaign for Dartmouth," ending in 1982. While at the College McCulloch majored in French and graduated cum laude.
