Warren Wilson College Increases Tuition for 2023-24 Academic Year
Tyson Lewis | March 23, 2023
On Mar. 20, student-l received an email from Interim President Bill Christy that Warren Wilson College (WWC) will raise the price of tuition by 4.75% for the 2023-2024 academic year returning to the model of an annual increase. The same day, financial aid emails were also sent out.
“For the 2023-2024 year, our tuition, fees, room, and board will increase by 4.75 percent,” Christy stated. “The lowest we felt we could responsibly adopt due to the College’s current financial position and rising inflation. This is within a typical range for private colleges and universities across the country.”
Christy had contextualized this information in the opening paragraph of the email stating that other colleges increased their prices on average by 7 percent. The email states that with this price increase, Warren Wilson will continue to try to be accessible.
“The College will mitigate the impact of this price increase with additional grants for students who have high demonstrated financial need,” Christy stated. “We award more than $17 million in merit and need-based aid each year. If you have not done so already, I strongly encourage you to complete your FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) for the 2023-2024 school year as soon as possible.”
Christy was in communication with the Financial Aid Office as he states that it was intentional that students get emails about their financial aid soon after getting the tuition increase emails.
“We wanted to get that financial aid information out to everybody that we could,” Christy said. “We understand, you get that and it's like, you know, what does this mean, for me? I think that's what my students first go to, and I don't blame them. And so we want to try to have that information available as quickly as possible.”
Christy explained the factors that went into the decision-making process for the raise in price. He further contextualizes the decision alongside current inflation.
“We recommended the increase based on several things,” Christy said. “One, that there had been no increases in the last three years. And I don't know, there may be some other colleges that could say that not very many. Number two, this past year has seen significant inflation that all of us feel and affect everything. All the prices of everything are going up. And so we felt like that a price increase was warranted.”
Christy elaborated on how inflation is affecting Warren Wilson specifically.
“If a little bit over 50% of our budget goes for personnel, then a lot of the rest of it goes for fixed costs, fuel the cost of maintenance materials has gone up dramatically,” Christy said. “The food, there's an inflation factor built in with our arrangement with Sodexo. So you know, in the media, there's a lot of attention to the price of eggs which have gone from $2 to five or $6 a dozen. That's emblematic of what's going on.”
In the past 12 months, the CPI (Consumer Price Index) has risen by 6 percent. This change is affecting everyone in the U.S. Warren Wilson included. Christy however explains why the increase is going to be 4.75%. Christy could not disclose the arrangement with Sodexo.
“As I think that the attempt was to try to reach an amount that we believed in the light of what's going on, not only here, but in other schools is fair and below market,” Christy said. “If you will, we still think these increases are less here than in other places.”
Christy concluded the interview.
“It's a complex world that we live in, and the financial aspects are very complicated and very interrelated. And you know, bottom line, our costs are increasing,” Christy said. “Like most colleges, tuition does not cover by any stretch of the imagination the entire cost of education. So you don't have to raise money and a lot of other different things. So we're always sort of looking at all the different factors. But the goal is to try to like I say, be fair to the students, be fair to our employees, and treat them as fairly as we can.”