LU tuition will rise, but only half as much as planned

Liberty University students each will pay $540 less for tuition in the 2009-10 school year than the school originally had planned to charge.

In the school’s convocation service Wednesday morning, Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. announced that the school would raise its tuition rates for the next year, but only by about half as much as originally planned.

“We’ve been blessed with some very generous gifts over the last two years,” Falwell said in an interview Wednesday. “And we just thought our first priority should be our students in using those gifts. It’s our way of passing on the generosity that we’ve received from others.”

When applied to all of the school’s 11,300 residential students, the decrease will total more than $6 million that the school would have received before the cut, Falwell said.

Last fall, the college had set its tuition rate for a full-time residential student in 2009-10 at $16,532. That would have been about a 7 percent increase over the current school year’s tuition rate of $15,450.

The new rate is $15,992, which instead is a 3.5 percent increase.

Lynchburg College, Randolph College and Sweet Briar College have not yet set their tuition rates, the schools reported Wednesday.

Robert Lambeth Jr., president of the Bedford-based Council for Independent Colleges in Virginia, said that most colleges in the state have not yet set their rates, but they are being mindful of tough economic times for students and their families.

“I think all the private colleges are concerned about assisting students,” Lambeth said Wednesday. “We are aware that these are challenging times, and the colleges are working very closely with students and their families to make sure that attending a private college is within reach.”

He said that from speaking with institutions, he believes that most private colleges in the state will make “modest” tuition-rate increases.

“Every college is different,” he said. “What you have to look at is the bottom line. Even if your tuition goes up, if (financial) aid goes up too, then the student might not be affected much.”

At Liberty, officials plan to make up for some of the cuts through delaying construction projects such as traffic circles, road improvements or the vehicular tunnels connecting the campus to Wards Road.

The school has not yet decided which of those may be delayed, Falwell said.

Many improvements are mandated by the school’s Master Plan. But the ones that may be deferred only become required once the school hits a benchmark of 12,000 students.

“We’re going to hold our enrollment at 11,300 until the economy recovers,” Falwell said.

The tuition rates at Liberty University Online, which reached the 30,000-student mark Tuesday, will remain in place for now, Falwell said.

The school is not anticipating any cuts to academic-related projects or programs, he said, nor to hiring or employment practices.

“Students won’t see a difference,” he said.