University of Massachusetts trustees on Wednesday approved a plan that will freeze next year's tuition at its current level for in-state students at its four undergraduate campuses, while raising medical school tuition and out-of-state tuition at UMass Amherst each by 1.5 percent.
Tuition for out-of-state students at the Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell campuses will not increase.
Trustee Stephen Karam, who chairs the board's Administration and Finance Committee, said trustees usually set tuition levels at a summer meeting.
"By doing it now, our campuses will be able to provide more certainty to our students about the cost of attending one of our campuses and hopefully give them a more competitive edge in recruiting and retaining our students," he said.
Student trustee Timothy Scalona, a master's of public policy student at UMass Amherst, cast the lone "no" vote. He said he understood that the university faces financial challenges arising from the COVID-19 crisis but said raising out-of-state tuition at the Amherst campus was "not something that I feel like I can vote for, as a student representative."
Karam and trustees Michael O'Brian, Imari Paris Jeffries, and Julie Ramos Gagliardi abstained from the vote, saying they have children attending UMass.
The average in-state undergraduate tuition at UMass, before financial aid, works out to $14,722 over the past two years, system officials have said. UMass President Marty Meehan said that a tuition freeze next year means the school will forego more than $14 million in revenue it might have otherwise collected.
Officials said the net price of a UMass education, or the price minus financial aid, "remains consistent with other New England public land-grant universities and 31 percent below peer private institutions." At $352 million this fiscal year, institutionally funded financial aid at UMass is at a record high, accounts for 40 percent of the total aid UMass students receive, and has increased by $116 million, or 49 percent, since fiscal 2015.
