Differential tuition sometimes applies only to certain majors like technology or music.
When students look for a college, a primary concern is the current rate of tuition. Students sometimes are not aware that colleges legally can charge different fees to different students. To get an accurate picture of costs, students have to ask whether they'll have any differential tuition charges to their accounts.
Definition
A differential tuition fee is a fee a college charges that is above and beyond the regular or base tuition rate. For example, if the college usually charges $200 per credit hour but charges some students $250 per credit hour, the differential tuition fee would be $50. People sometimes refer to differential tuition as supplemental tuition or a tuition surcharge.
Use
Colleges use differential tuition fees to cover the cost of particular initiatives the college may have. Initiatives can be anything from campus beautification to graduate research. Differential tuition thus relates directly to what the university feels is most necessary to support at a given time, meaning that differential tuition fees are not always static and are subject to the value systems of the community in which the college operates.
Amount
Differential tuition fee amounts are not standard. They can be as low as just a few dollars or several hundred dollars per student, depending on the cost of the initiative. The number of students at a college also impacts what students pay in differential tuition. For example, suppose a small college had 5,000 students to which the initiative could apply and an initiative that cost $1 million per semester. Assuming 12 credits per student or 60,000 credits total, the college would have to charge a little under $17 per credit hour as a differential tuition charge in order to cover the initiative. If the school had 10,000 students to which the initiative applied, however, then the cost could be divided among 120,000 credits, and each student would pay a little over $8 per credit hour in differential tuition per semester.
Pros and Cons
The primary benefit of differential tuition is that colleges can support projects and activities that otherwise would not be possible given the college's budget. The college also can advertise each initiative as a positive change initiation to attract new students. However, if differential tuition fees rise too high, colleges may turn students off from applying, particularly in tough economic times or when students are paying most or all of their tuition out of pocket. Differential tuition also creates more complicated student accounts, and the college has to provide clear explanations of the purpose of the charges.
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