As members of the Brandeis community, you all just received an email letting you know that we’ll be experiencing a rise in tuition. As members of the Brandeis community, you also may have heard about freezes being placed on staff raises.
Looking at the tuition increase first, members of the Brandeis community were just notified via email that “The Board [of Trustees] voted to approve the FY2025 budget, including an increase in the endowment spend rate and the tuition, room and board rates (4.25%). With that budgetary guidance, the university can consider how to address its revenue projections.” This is, frankly, unacceptable.
Brandeis is already astronomically expensive. According to the university itself, expenses for a student living on-campus can amount to a staggering $89,824 each year. This is more than even Harvard University, where students pay a (still absurd) $82,866 per year. Increasing Brandeis’ tuition and room/board by the recently approved 4.25% will likely cause Brandeis students to pay upwards of $90,000 to be educated. Even as writers, we are shocked beyond words.
Additionally, in another of the administration’s most recent efforts to save Brandeis’ finances, they have decided to freeze staff raises. Staff have, understandably, gotten extremely irritated about this. We at The Hoot feel that their anger and upset is justified: the right way for Brandeis to save money isn’t for the administration to hold back the raises that the hardworking staff here deserve. They work day-in and day-out to make this university function, and freezing the raises they need is unacceptable.
We at The Hoot are not budget experts. We are not finance experts who aim to provide a silver bullet to Brandeis’ financial woes. However, as members of the Brandeis community, we do not accept these decisions that we feel will negatively affect the Brandeis community.
Brandeis should find ways to deal with their financial issues that don’t involve damaging the lives (and financial situations) of the students and staff that the university relies upon. The Hoot asks Brandeis to do better, for all of our sakes.
