[1]ABILENE, Texas (BP)–A declining-rate tuition plan for new full-time students enrolling for the 1999-2000 academic year has been adopted at Hardin-Simmons University, a Baptist-affiliated university in Abilene, Texas.
The university board of trustees’ executive committee, in a Dec. 1 meeting, approved a tuition rate of $290 per semester credit hour for new undergraduate students and $300 per semester hour for new graduate students effective June 1, 1999.
The unique aspect of the “HSU Commitment Plus” tuition plan, said Hardin-Simmons President Lanny Hall, is that after an undergraduate has satisfactorily completed 60 semester hours at the university in consecutive fall and spring semesters as a full-time student, the tuition rate will be reduced to $280 per semester hour. In the third stage of the plan, after satisfactorily completing 90 semester hours as a full-time student in consecutive fall and spring semesters, the tuition rate will be decrease another $10 to $270 per semester hour.
Hall noted that in the fall of 1992 Hardin-Simmons initiated a “HSU Commitment” that guaranteed the same tuition rate for their entire academic career at HSU for full-time students attending consecutive fall and spring semesters and making satisfactory academic progress — a measure to hold tuition rates at the same level so that students and their parents could better plan for college costs.
The new plan, Hall said, will encourage students to make timely progress toward completing their degrees by rewarding them during their junior and senior years.
Neither the HSU Commitment nor the HSU Commitment Plus, however, applies to enrollment in the Abilene Intercollegiate School of Nursing nor the master of physical therapy program, university officials said.