In-state students to get 25 percent summer discount

IU’s Board of Trustees approved a discount in summer tuition during a special meeting Friday in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana Memorial Union.

The discount would mean a 25 percent reduction in tuition for in-state students.

Out-of-state students would receive a reduction equivalent to the dollar amount reduction in-state students receive. The discounts will apply at all IU campuses, Trustee MaryEllen Bishop said.

“The trustees are always looking for ways to continue to cost-cut,” Bishop said. “With these economic times we live in, we all have to do it.”

President Michael McRobbie presented the plan to the trustees after he announced it Oct. 24 at a news conference on the IU-Purdue University Indianapolis campus.

The discount will be applied beginning in the summer 2012 session and will save students as much as $1,050 on the Bloomington campus if taking a full course load, according to a press release.

Trustee Pat Shoulders said the discount will help in the retention of students and utilization of campus facilities.

“I think that in this time, where there’s pressure on tuition and the cost of college, it makes sense for us to try to come up with creative ways to utilize our buildings, help kids graduate and lower the cost of college,” he said.

Bishop said she is unsure if there will be a substantial increase in enrollment this summer, but she expects changes in the coming years.

“This first summer, we’ve got to work through the details and keep the doors open,” she said.

Shoulder said the discount and the change in the structure of IU’s summer session to be more like a traditional semester may be the first steps toward making university education a year-round endeavor.

“It probably will be a model for other universities,” he said. “I think they’ll all begin to follow this, and I think it’ll help to rethink the traditional semester structure of higher education.”