With the nation’s economy under a constant struggle, it’s no surprise that Baker University will continue to increase its tuition for the 2010-2011 school year.

The current tuition for the College of Arts and Sciences sits at $21,050, but will increase 5.5 percent for next school year. Room and board will increase three percent.

“Generally, the school tries to stay somewhere between five and six percent for tuition increases,” University Budget Director Darla Prather said. “For the current year, we went up six percent. In 2008-2009 we went up 5.5 (percent), in 2007-2008 we had a 6.4 percent increase, in 2006-2007 we saw six percent and before that we were below six (percent) for three years.”

When the university begins tuition talk for the following school year, it first looks at how Baker compares with other schools it tends to lose recruits to. Most of these institutions are private universities in Kansas or Missouri, with a few in Iowa.

Chief Operating Officer Susan Lindahl said the discount rate of different institutions is taken into consideration as well.

“I think it’s important to know the discount rate for the schools, so what are they discounting the tuition, because our rate is pretty significant,” Lindahl said.

Baker had a discount rate of 50.37 percent for the current school year, which was slightly higher than the 50.01 percent it had in the 2008-2009 school year.

“There’s that school of thought that if we would decrease the amount of aid that we give then there would be more money for the university … but as you can see, there has to be that magic balance so that a student has an opportunity to attend,” Lindahl said.

Lindahl and Prather both said the most important thing to keep in mind is how an increase in tuition would affect students.

“(University President Pat Long) said, ‘I want you to keep tuition as low as you can possibly keep it,'” Lindahl said. “So, we are trying to find ways to find a budget relief without directly impacting our students.”