By Adam Clark, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
NEW BRUNSWICK — When Rutgers University announced a 2.3 percent tuition increase last week, school officials cited rising expenses, including 2 percent raises for several employee unions with new contracts.
But the school’s faculty has its own ideas for why the typical undergraduate student will have to pay about $300 more to attend the New Brunswick campus this fall.
“The expanding ranks of highly paid managers and the bottomless pit of athletics spending seem far greater cost drivers at Rutgers than faculty and staff who experienced years of wage freezes while tuition continued to rise,” professor Deepa Kumar said this week on behalf of the university’s faculty union.
RELATED: What Rutgers students need to know about the tuition hike
Kumar said university leaders should work with the faculty to advocate for increased state funding rather than blame them for the tuition increase.
Tuition and fee increases at Rutgers have outpaced the raises to faculty over the past four years, according to The American Association of University Professors- American Federation of Teachers, which represents Rutgers’ professors and graduate students.
In makings its case, the union also pointed to a 2014 audit showing that 79 top Rutgers administrators and mangers were making at least $250,000. In another finding, the audit reported that Rutgers’ $75 million athletic program was not self-supported in 2013 and relied on 44 percent of its funding from student fees and core academic funds.
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