Undergraduate tuition for next year will be $28,670, with fees for room (standard double occupancy), board, and health insurance at $11,128. This will bring the total cost of attendance in 2007–8 to $39,798, an increase of 6.04% from this year.
In a letter to students’ parents announcing the rates, President Peggy R. Williams said that the increase reflects the college’s ongoing efforts to improve the quality of an Ithaca College education, while controlling expenses and cost increases.
“Making sure students have every opportunity to pursue their talents and interests, both within and outside of the classroom, is a challenge for any institution,” she wrote. “Each year, Ithaca College administrators, together with the college’s board of trustees, work to invest in quality improvements and balance the realities of escalating costs for items such as employee health benefits, utilities, insurance and technology upgrades and replacements.”
Williams noted that the actual cost of educating an Ithaca College student is approximately $6,000 more than current tuition, and that the college continually seeks methods for reducing its debt load and increasing both gift revenue and endowment income. Finally, after exploring every other possible revenue stream, it considers raising tuition, room and board rates.
“We know that maintaining the highest standards involves a continual process of improving not only academic programs, but also facilities, residential programs and student financial aid,” Williams wrote. “We are currently involved in a $115 million capital campaign to fund several new initiatives, including new academic programs, a tremendous boost to scholarship aid, a new School of Business building, a new Athletics and Events Center, improved student housing and continued support of the Ithaca Fund.”
Included in the letter was a chart showing tuition fees at a group of 20 regionally competitive private colleges and universities with which Ithaca College has compared itself for the past two decades. Ithaca’s tuition for next year is still lower than the current tuition for all but three of those institutions.
Bill Schwab was first elected to the board in 1989 and served for 10 years before resigning due to professional commitments. He was reelected in 2001, and in 2004 he was elected vice chair. He has served as chair of the Executive Committee, Educational Policy Committee and Trusteeship Committee.
Schwab is a professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and chief of the Division of Traumatology and Surgical Critical Care at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He earned a degree in chemistry from Ithaca College and his medical degree from SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.
One of the nation’s leading experts on trauma surgery and systems, Schwab is active in the field of violence prevention and in developing a program in which trauma surgeons can become leaders in the public health effort to reduce firearm-related injuries. He serves as a consultant to the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 1985 he was named by Esquire magazine as one of the best of those under the age of 40 who are changing America. He won the Curtis Artz Award from the American Trauma Society, which is presented to the physician felt to have made outstanding contributions in the field of injury prevention and care.
He and his wife, Marjorie Rooke Schwab ’69, have been active volunteers on behalf of the college for many years. Marjorie served as chair of the Campaign for the School of Music, which raised over $10 million to build the James J. Whalen Center for Music.
Also during their meeting, trustees were updated on the campus master plan by representatives from HOLT Architects and on the status of the comprehensive fund-raising campaign and the School of Business, Athletics and Events Center, and Gateway building projects. They also heard a presentation from representatives from the Frederick Douglass Academy recognizing the 10th anniversary of the partnership between Ithaca College and the renowned public school in Harlem.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20070222112807168