For many University students, the following situation may sound familiar. A student spends a semester taking 15 or 18 credit hours before dropping down to 12 credit hours the next semester. Upon payment of the 12-credit tuition bill, the student discovers their tuition costs the same as it did when their class load was considerably heavier.

The student wonders, why?

While prices and numbers of credit hours are different at each university, most public universities in the state of Ohio have a set tuition rate in place for the students who qualify as full-time.

Bowling Green’s set tuition rate is $4,028 per semester for students taking 11-18 credit hours. Students taking below 11 credit hours are required to pay $395 per credit hour, and for each hour above 18, students pay an additional $50.

According to the Bursar’s office, although 11 credit hours is not considered full-time, students taking 11 credit hours still pay the flat rate.

To the student accustomed to taking 15-18 credit hours, it may seem that students with 11-14 hours have an unfair deal.

However, each student paying the flat-rate of $4,028 is actually saving money.

For example, if a student with 11 credit hours were to pay by the credit hour, they would spend $4,345, a total of $317 more than the current set tuition rate.

At 18 credit hours, the savings really add up. Students pay $3,082 less per semester than they would if they paid for their tuition by the credit hour.

Even students taking more than 18 hours save money despite the additional $50 fee they pay per credit hour over 18. However, according to Chris Dalton, senior vice president for Finance and Administration, the reason for the flat tuition rate is more complex than a simple student discount.

“There aren’t any easy answers as to why things are always done the way they are,” Dalton said.

Making an analogy of tuition rates and cereal boxes, Dalton explained part of the rationale behind flat tuition rates.

“If you want to buy a box of cereal, you can buy small boxes or medium-sized boxes or extra-large boxes,” he said. “If you look at the price per ounce, it gets a lot less as you go up to the larger boxes because there are the expenses of packaging and marketing. An awful lot of the costs aren’t very different as you go up in the size of the box. In terms of the production and the sale of the materials, you have essentially more ounces in the larger box to spread the cost out over, so the price goes down.”

Likewise, Dalton said, students taking more credit hours pay less per credit, partly because some costs students pay upon registration do not increase as a student takes more credit hours.

According to Dalton, these unchanging costs include information technology, the bursar’s office, registration and all costs associated with the registrar’s office.

Dalton said that a benefit of the current tuition method at Bowling Green is encouragement for students to take more credit hours without paying more money.

While most universities in Ohio have flat rate tuition for full-time students, they have adopted slightly different ways of billing their students for tuition.

At Ohio State University, part-time students pay for their credit hours on a sliding scale. This means part-time students pay more per credit hour if they take only two hours. The part-time student who takes 3-11 credit hours pays $178 per credit, and students taking 12 or more hours pay a flat tuition rate.

Ohio University’s tuition system is quite similar to Bowling Green’s, with a set tuition rate for students taking 11-20 hours. Students taking above 20 hours pay an additional $119 per credit.

Kimberly Trout, associate bursar for billing at Ohio University, said that while she didn’t know the original rationale behind flat tuition rates, saving students money was the best reason she could see for using the flat rates.

At the University of Toledo, where students pay a flat fee for 12-16 credit hours, administrators support a change in the way colleges statewide charge their students.

According to Tobin Klinger, director of university communications at the University of Toledo, two years ago, the university tried to add a surcharge to each credit hour above 12. However, the Ohio Board of Regents stepped in and said the state-imposed fee cap would not allow the additional charge.

While BGSU was temporarily deterred from its plan to modify tuition, it is still an advocate of changes for tuition billing.

According to Dalton, any changes in the current tuition method at Bowling Green would be difficult to put into effect due to the state-imposed fee cap. This year, the state of Ohio is writing a new two-year budget, which will include how much money will be allocated to state universities.

As a way to keep universities from charging too much money for tuition, the state is expected to impose a new fee cap, which will specify what percent increases will be allowed for tuition costs.

“With that constraint, it would be complicated to try to change the fee structure. If we were to try to move to a structure where [students] paid the same for every hour, whether it was eight hours or whether it was 18 hours,” Dalton said.

Whether or not a good enough reason to change the tuition structure will emerge is debatable, but Dalton said the subject of changing the current system does come up in meetings.

“This is an area that we think about once in a while. When we are looking at the [tuition] increases — the issue of part-time versus full-time, although the flexibility to make changes is often not there,” Dalton said. “The state puts constraints on the overall process for us.”.