STARKVILLE — In an effort to balance tuition costs with the number of credit hours students actually take, Mississippi State University is making changes to its tuition structure.
Starting this fall, any full-time student taking more than 16 semester hours will have to pay more for each additional hour.
Previously, students who took between 12 and 21 hours semester hours paid the same tuition, the “full-time” rate based on 12 hours. Under the new structure, students will be charged additional “overload tuition” at the regular hourly rate – currently about $418 – for exceeding the 16-hour cap.
Based on 2024-25 rates, MSU full-time tuition is about $5,026 per semester. Under the new formula, a student taking 18 hours this fall will pay $5,862. That disparity will increase as tuition rates rise.
Vice President for Strategic Communications and Director of Public Affairs Sid Salter said the change corrects a long uneven tuition model.
“I think … that we corrected a structural imbalance in our fee system after many years of letting the tuition be based on 12 hours but actually delivering more than that,” Salter told The Dispatch on Tuesday. “I think it is something that, because of our research performance, we had the ability for a time to do that, but that decision was made when enrollment was much smaller and the expenses of operating a university were at a different level than they are today.”
He acknowledged the change is due, in part, to the current economic climate.
“Everything that is affecting families – cost of food, cost of fuel, the general inflation in consumable goods – we’re dealing with that as an institution,” Salter said. “It was past time for Mississippi State to make those adjustments.”
Salter said the changes align the university with how peer institutions in the state and the broader Southeastern Conference calculate tuition.
“We’re not doing anything here that’s out of the box or unusual,” he said. “We’re actually right sizing our fee and tuition system to the standard that’s observed in the rest of the public institutions in the state.”
Ole Miss, Southern Mississippi and Alabama all use an overload tuition structure, meaning additional courses past a certain point are no longer covered by the standard full-time tuition.
MSU and the University of Alabama cap their tuition-covered classes at 16. However, both USM and Ole Miss allow students to take up to 19 courses a semester before having to pay an overload cost, according to their respective websites. Mississippi University for Women also charges overload fees for students taking more than 19 hours.
So a full-time, undergraduate student at Ole Miss who takes 19 hours each semester for four years, the student is paying about $38,448 in tuition. At USM, that student would pay about $39,552 over four years. If the same student took 19 hours at MSU each semester, over four years they would pay about $50,260, based on tuition figures from MSU’s website.
Salter said the university doesn’t believe the new structure will stop students from graduating on time.
“The vast majority of our students are receiving scholarship help, and the percentage … that pays varies obviously, but … we don’t think this is going to impede students (graduating),” he said. “… We may have a few cases, but I don’t think that’s going to be widespread at all.”
Though the announcement came Friday – more than a week after the May 1 deadline for incoming freshmen to accept admission to MSU – Salter said the university feels the timing of the announcement still leaves those students enough time to make a plan for their courseload.
“There really is no good time to give students that kind of adjustment, but we waited until the end of the semester, and they have the summer periods to do what they need to do,” he said. “I really don’t see that anybody is locked in at this point that they can’t discuss scheduling with their adviser and find solutions. We’re certainly committed to helping every student find solutions to those type issues.”
Additional program fees
The university also announced additional college-specific fees that will apply to sophomores, juniors and seniors based on their academic college. Salter said the fees range from $300 to $500 and reflect the different instructional costs across disciplines.
The plan has been in the works for a long time, and the university has done its due diligence in considering how it may affect students, Salter said. But the decision was still made with some difficulty, Salter said.
“I think that was a hard decision for us because (the former structure was one) that kind of fit the mission of the university, but we just realized that moving forward with that was not sustainable, and so it was time to fix it,” he said. “I think we actually have positioned the university to grow and to improve by making sure that the university is compensated for the credit hours we’re providing our students.
“For people to suggest that’s somehow unfair, I think it’s been unfair to the university to provide that education product at less than what they’re paying down the road,” Salter added.
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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