Tuition Rises Again, Nears 60K

The Middlebury College Board of Trustees met over Winter Carnival weekend to discuss a range of issues including a 2.94 percent increase in tuition, a new Korean language school and various construction projects underway between the main College campus and Monterey Institute campus.

According to Vice President of Communications Bill Burger, the February Board of Trustees meeting is traditionally the time when the Board determines the next year’s tuition. For the 2014-15 school year, the Board approved a combined tuition and room and board total of $58,753 – up 2.94 percent from this current academic year.

In an effort to control rising costs, this is the fifth consecutive year that Middlebury has utilized its “CPI plus 1” rule. This rule, announced by President Liebowitz in in 2010, caps the tuition increase from year to year at one percentage point above inflation – as determined by the Consumer Price Index. This is the first year this rule was not applied to room and board increases, which rose 4.5 percent from last year to $13,116. Vice President Burger put this effort into context.

“Since 2010, when we started the CPI plus 1, we have measured where we stand among 21 peer schools. When we started, we were one of the most expensive of the 21. We are now 18th.”

When asked about efforts to reduce cost, Burger responded that, “The board is always sensitive, as is the administration, to the cost of what we do.” However he noted that, “It’s not as though you could reduce the cost of tuition by $10,000.”

Other major decisions handed down by the board include the approval of an eleventh Language School – the School of Korean. Vice President of Language Schools Michael Geisler said that the Language School hopes to find a director and build a program in time to launch in the summer of 2015. “Although, until a few years ago, relatively few non-heritage speakers studied Korean, the number of new learners has grown rapidly in the past decade,” Geisler said.

Korean is spoken by more than 67 million speakers around the world making it the sixteenth most spoken language. To be prepared for the shifting landscapes of global business, security and diplomatic requirements, Geisler cited the need for a strategic language reserve – that is a group of people able to speak the world’s most important languages. “Middlebury Language Schools can play a significant part in delivery of our strategic language reserve,” he said.

On the construction front, the Board discussed plans to create a pedestrian mall at the Monterey Institute campus in Monterey, CA. The Monterey project is still awaiting approval by the City of Monterey, but if approved would create more of a campus-feel to what is now an urban setting.

Construction is set to begin this fall on renovations and winterization of Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School campus in Ripton, VT. The renovations are primarily focused on compliance with safety and accessibility codes while the winterization makes the space available for use during the colder months. There is a soft deadline for this project of May 2015 in order to be prepared for the 31st Young Writer’s Conference at Bread Loaf. All told, this project will cost $7.5 million.

Beyond the issues discussed, Burger talked about the layout of the meetings and how the agenda is set. He characterizes them as very well planned and well structured. Typically board members break into committees and then, during full Board meetings, address key topics discussed in their respective committees. Some issues, like the Korean language school, required a vote by the full Board. Other topics, such as the state of the online learning landscape, were simply reported on.

Much of the work is done before the Trustees arrive. “The Board always receives information in advance of its meetings so that Trustees have the information they need to make decisions,” Burger said. “And on key issues there is always some discussion as well.” At this most recent meeting, Burger says there were no contentious issues, which is not unusual for these meetings

“I have never been to a board meeting where there’s been a true surprise,” he said.

The next Board of Trustee meeting will take place in May. While the agenda is not set, this meeting will be momentous in that it will be the last under the current governing structure.