<p>So as I’ve already warned you folks, I’m math challenged - but I just wanted to see approximately how much OOS tuition would have to rise in order to offset the proposed change from 35 percent to 25 percent OOS students at W&M. Assuming that the number of students remained constant at 6,000 undergrads, and that tuition stayed the same for in-state students (which it won’t), I come up with an additional $8,400 dollars per year per OOS student. So instead of paying the current $28,547 yearly tuition-only cost, OOS students would pay $36,947 (about $1400 less than the current cost of tuition at Harvard). That’s almost a 30 percent tuition increase for OOS students - and that’s not taking into consideration the millions less in taxpayer funds that W&M will receive this year and next. That shortfall will have to be made up somewhere. Think OOS tuition could go to $40K? </p>
<p>I suggest to delegates Hugo and Albo that W&M would effectively be pricing itself out of the market for many, if not most, OOS students - those same students who boost W&M’s student profile with standardized test scores above the median, and often above the 75th percentile. To say nothing of contributing geographic and cultural diversity to campus - something truly top schools must offer their students.</p>
<p>Also agree with others here about the undeserved dissing of Virginia Tech, JMU, Mary Washington, and others in Virginia’s heretofore admirable public college system.</p>