USC board of trustees freezes tuition for the second year in a row

The University of South Carolina’s board of trustees has frozen tuition for the upcoming school year.

Tuition will stay at $12,688 for in-state students and $33,928 for out-of-state students, which it has been since the 2019-2020 school year.

“While the pandemic is not yet over and we must remain vigilant, our university is poised to return to full in-person operations strong and resilient,” interim President Harris Pastides said in a news release.

USC was able to freeze tuition because of the money it expects to receive from the state budget and a freshman class that is “projected to be among the largest in (USC’s) history,” according to a news release.

Food and housing costs, however, will increase by just under $140 per year, according to the release.

USC was also conservative when budgeting for a projected budget crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shortly after the pandemic struck, USC froze hiring and construction on a massive dormitory complex, and temporarily cut salaries for the highest-paid employees. As a result, USC’s revenues in the 2021 fiscal year were $49 million more than expected, according to a presentation by USC’s vice president for finance and budget, Kelly Epting.

Former USC President Robert Caslen promised in fall 2020 that tuition would not increase in the 2021-2022 school year. Even after Caslen’s abrupt resignation earlier this year, USC stayed the course to freeze tuition.

The tuition freeze was passed as a part of the trustees’ approval of the university’s $1.7 billion budget. The university projects an additional $65 million in new revenue, which will be used to fund mandatory cost increases — such as subsidizing graduate students health care, paying for increased utilities costs, scholarships, and retirement costs — fixing buildings, help build the new School of Medicine on Bull Street, recruiting campus police officers, boosting the university’s fundraising apparatus, paying merit-based salary increases to faculty, and more, according to Epting’s presentation.