Bowling Green, Ky. - It will cost $62 less than anticipated for students to attend Western Kentucky University for the 2005-06 academic year if the university's Board of Regents accepts a recommendation approved today by the board's Finance and Budget Committee.

Tuition was originally set in April 2004 after the Kentucky General Assembly adjourned without passing a budget. However, the budget approved in the 2005 session "proved beneficial for postsecondary education," WKU President Gary Ransdell said. "For the first time since 2000, we have received an incremental increase in state appropriations."

That has allowed the University to revise its tuition and fee schedule, lowering it $62, or 1.8 percent, from the rate approved in 2004. A residential undergraduate student will pay $2,580 for the fall of 2005 and $2,736 for the spring of 2006. Those amounts are 15.7 percent above 2004-05, but less than the 17.8 percent previously approved.

"We were the only university to set tuition in advance," Dr. Ransdell said, adding that those rates have been published so that students and their families can plan accordingly.

Dr. Ransdell said the revised tuition and the increased state funding will allow Western to continue with high quality academic programs and physical plant upgrades that were planned with the original tuition projections. He added that the spring increase represents the Campus Rebuilding Fee necessary for major physical plant upgrades.

The tuition schedule change will go before the full board at its April 29 meeting.

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