This semester marked the beginning of ACU’s new block tuition plan. The plan was announced to faculty, staff and students last fall and put into practice at the beginning of this school year.
Kelly Young, chief financial officer, said most schools already use a block tuition plan.
“The way we have done block tuition is to take the average number of hours most students were taking to begin with in each semester, charge a block for those hours and provide a discount to students for buying in block, rather than charging by the hour at a more expensive rate,” Young said.
He said ACU’s block tuition plan is unique in that it also applies during the summer. The annual block tuition plan provides students with incentive to, “take as many hours as they can, move through school and ultimately help them get through faster and save money.”
The annual block tuition plan allows full-time undergraduate students to take a minimum of 30 hours per year at one set price. However, undergraduate students can take up to 36 hours per year with no additional tuition costs. Block tuition covers fall and spring semester courses as well as online and residential summer courses. It also includes Study Abroad programs for the school year and summer.
Young said the concept of block tuition was well received.
“We got very good feedback,” he said.
Young said not all undergraduate students are on block tuition, but the ones not taking advantage of it would be primarily seniors who only need a few hours to graduate.
Stacey McGee, associate chief financial officer, said ACU has a total of 3,631 undergraduate students. Of those students, 3,217 are on block tuition.
McGee said the new plan has impacted the university budget.
“It provides a more stable forecast for our budget,” McGee said. “So since it’s kind of one price for most of our full-time undergraduate students, it allows us to be able to forecast our revenue more accurately instead of that moving depending on what students take from semester to semester and what they take over the summer.”
