At Ohio University, we believe every student deserves an education that helps them unlock their limitless potential. That’s why we have made a commitment to access and affordability as part of our promise for a high-quality education.
In addition to developing unique, institutional affordability initiatives, the University has partnered with key national and state college affordability efforts. These efforts are not only creating efficiencies internally, they are also creating savings for our students and their families.
Access and Affordability
The OHIO Guarantee was implemented on the University’s Athens campus in 2015 in an effort to afford students and their families a set of comprehensive rates for the pursuit of an undergraduate degree at Ohio University. In 2018, the Ohio University Board of Trustees approved a measure that extended the OHIO Guarantee to Ohio University’s five regional campuses in order to to equalize tuition rates across the regional campuses and maintain the value of scholarships.
“We are so proud of our innovative OHIO Guarantee program, which allows students on all of our campuses to lock in their tuition rate for four years and makes budgeting for college much easier for our students and their parents,” said President M. Duane Nellis. “This program is demonstrative of our longstanding commitment to academic excellence, affordability and accessibility.”
The University also recently increased student access to high-quality academic resources across its campuses to increase the number of students taught by core faculty. This achieved a savings of $7.4 million over a five-year period.
In October 2018, the Ohio University Board of Trustees approved a resolution to make access to scholarship dollars through the OHIO Match program more accessible by opening up match dollars to a first-come, first-served basis. Additionally, the University can now to utilize unmatched scholarship dollars to support other eligible Ohio University students when applicable.
Textbook Savings
Ohio has also made an investment in increased online course offerings up to provide flexibility for students to make progress on their degrees. In fiscal year 2018, the University implemented seven new online course offerings for a total of 22 graduate, new online offerings for a total of 22 graduate, professional, bachelor’s completion, and certificate programs across six colleges.
“An impressive number of our faculty have readily embraced open education resources, which is demonstrative of their commitment to student access and success,” said Brad Cohen, senior vice provost for instructional innovation. “Without sacrificing standards or quality, our faculty have saved students roughly a million dollars through this effort alone, and this is just one of several strategies we are pursuing for easing the financial burden on our students."
Operational Efficiencies
The University has collaborated with Ohio’s public universities across the state to maximize our collective buying power on contracts, which has enabled OHIO to save $16.5M in just two years.
OHIO also implemented recommendations from the Benefits Advisory Committee, which successfully reduced University costs by $463,000 in fiscal year 2018 through the completion of a dependent audit.
"These examples are among many initiatives Ohio University has employed recently to advance access to a high-quality education for our students and their families," said President Nellis.