By Elliott Nguyen
Managing Editor
The Signal met with President Kathryn Foster and Vice President Sharon Blanton over Zoom on Tuesday, Jan. 25 to discuss specific areas of concern for the upcoming spring 2022 semester. Among those were the topics of the College’s finances, tuition and meal equivalency, as well as some things that students can look forward to.
Financial Situation
As students at the College move into the spring semester, nearly two years into the Covid-19 crisis, it has been made clear that the pandemic put a fiscal strain on the College in a variety of ways, with typical sources of revenue disappearing and existing funds being reallocated.
“The number of people we’ve had in our residence halls is down, again because we had to reserve some spaces for quarantine and isolation,” President Foster said. “You don’t get revenue from spaces that are empty.”
The College was also forced to divert resources to testing, personal protective equipment (PPE) and other Covid-related expenses from other areas, Foster said.
“We weren’t able to invest in some of the things that we would have wanted to invest in,” Foster added. “Just like your household budget. You have to make choices and so that’s what we’ve been doing.”
She noted that the College did receive additional funding “from the federal government, and some passed through to the state,” which did help offset some of the additional expenditure.
Foster explained that there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding how the College’s fiscal status will play out in the coming years, but that in a financial sense, the College has moved past the initial difficulties of the pandemic.
“There’s no question [Covid-19] has an impact on finances,” said Foster, “but you could think of it as a moment, or a two-year moment, if you will, in the history of a college. I think the kinds of pressures that TCNJ, but really all colleges and universities, are facing now is ‘what does the model look like going forward? What does the business model look like going forward?’”
Potential factors moving forward include enrollment numbers, residential capacity — compared to how many beds are actually filled — and how much money the College receives from the state. Then, said Foster, it would depend on expenditures such as general education costs, facility maintenance and extra programs such as study abroad or scholarships.
“We’re constantly looking at that,” Foster said, describing the balance between the College’s income and expenditures. “I don’t want to create an urgency around that, because it isn’t that, but I do want to say we are attentive to finances all the time. It’s like any business. You’re just trying to make sure that balance between the revenues and expenditures comes out in the black.”
She added that the College is required to balance its budget each year, because it “cannot run debt.”
Foster did note that the College is “in very good place compared to a number of colleges and universities.” But, she said, “that doesn’t mean that we’re not constantly looking at finances and trying to make sure that that balance works well.”
A “tight budget year” is a given, said Foster, but it remains to be seen whether that will be a trend or just a residual effect of the pandemic.
Tuition
The College has not seen a rise in tuition since the first Covid-19 outbreak for a number of reasons. Among them, said Foster, were strains on students’ finances as well as the lack of activities to which students had access to — which resulted in the temporary suspension of the College’s Student Activity Fee of $149.78 per semester.
However, with the College’s second in-person semester now underway, students can expect regular tuition increases to resume in the near future. In 2016, undergraduate in-state tuition for full-time students was $5,561.87. In 2017, that tuition increased to $6,315.85. By the time of Fall 2019, undergraduate in-state tuition was $6,619.40.
“You can begin to expect that because of inflation, because of the way that expenses go up and because of what it costs to provide a TCNJ education that just as people’s incomes may be going up, some of your expenses are going up,” Foster said.
“I would never be able to say you’ll never see a tuition and fee increase again,” she added.
However, she did add that the state of New Jersey has a program that could provide financial assistance to students of lower-income households. Known as the “Garden State Guarantee,” the program offers free tuition and fees — after any applicable financial aid — to qualified students from households of adjusted gross incomes of $65,000 or less. The program also applies to students from households of adjusted gross incomes between $65,000 and $80,000 but only partially covers their tuition and fees.
Last year, the program was expanded so that the benefits can also apply to the third and fourth year of students’ college educations.
“So that, added to our investment and financial aid, will attempt to have the impact of any increase in price, tuition and fees not harm the students who are from the households that have lower incomes,” Foster said in regards to the program.
Meal Equivalency
During the fall 2021 semester, among rising complaints about the dining services at Eickhoff Hall and other locations on campus, the College’s student government began working with Vice President of Student Affairs Sean Stallings to address the issue.
Among the topics discussed was the potential return of meal equivalency, a program that had been in place pre-pandemic that allowed students to forgo their access to the Atrium at Eickhoff Hall in exchange for free points — roughly eight or nine — at any of the other on-campus dining locations. This option was available for a span of several hours at the same time each day, and helped spread out student diners across campus so that the Atrium would not get too crowded.
However, this program was cancelled last semester.
Student government advocated for the reinstallment of meal equivalency, but thus far it has not taken place.
When asked about the possibility of its return, Foster said that her understanding of the issue was that students may misunderstand the benefits of the program.
Last semester, when meal equivalency was removed, students instead received the lost value as additional points on their meal plan, Foster said. Thus a return to meal equivalency would mean students only have access to those “extra points” at the one set time instead of at any time of day.
In the Fall 2019 semester, student residents had access to two categories of meal plans: Carte Blanche, which offered swipes into the Atrium at Eickhoff Hall as well as dining points to be spent at other locations on campus, and A La Carte, which offered just dining points — albeit many more — to be used at all dining locations on campus.
Blanton pointed out that it would also likely result in larger crowds at Brower Student Center, something for which meal equivalency was infamous.
“I don't think it's likely that it will be brought back while we're still in this Covid aware time period where we're trying to really space things out as much as possible, so that's definitely a factor in this conversation,” Blanton said.
Looking Ahead
As the College seeks to continue its return to normalcy, there are some things for students to look forward to this semester.
Foster brought up Martin Luther King Jr. week, which is now well underway and also kickstarts Black history month. Students can expect some “pretty exciting programming,” she said. After that, students can celebrate women’s history month in March and then Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) awareness day on April 9.
And, unlike in the spring 2021 semester, the College will once again have a spring break.
“That was such a challenge last year,” Foster said. “Everyone felt that absence. I hope that there is some sense of, at least, the calendar has a little bit of normalcy to it.”
Near the end of the semester, the College will host its annual celebration of student achievement. This year, unlike in past years, it will be a day on which classes will be suspended to allow all students to present their achievements or witness those of their peers.
Foster expressed hope that this will “really [make] it into an intellectual showcase of the eminence and the excellence of TCNJ students.”
Foster said the College will continue with various projects to improve the visual appeal of the campus and, by proxy, its atmosphere.
“That's what I think many people come to the College of New Jersey for, which is this curricular and extracurricular and community minded experience,” she said. “Fingers crossed we will be able to have a smooth and safe and healthy semester ahead.”
