LSUS to offer non-resident tuition exemptions
11/15/04

LSUS will begin offering non-resident tuition exemptions to undergraduate and graduate students in the Fall 2005 semester. The move was approved recently by the LSU System Board of Supervisors help to make the university more competitive for out-of-state students who wish to attend LSUS.

Fall 2004 LSUS non-resident fees amounted to $1,630 for an out-of-state undergraduate student taking a 9-credit-hour course load and $2,165 for 12 or more credit hours.

LSUS currently has a non-resident tuition exemption program for students in Texas and Arkansas who live within 60 miles of Shreveport. Market research conducted by LSUS indicated the campus has an opportunity to be competitive for students outside that 60-mile radius if it could recruit them aggressively and offer non-resident tuition exemptions.

“We asked the LSU System Board of Supervisors for the non-resident tuition exemption because of our unique geography,” LSUS Chancellor Vince Marsala said. “No other university in Louisiana is located as close as we are to two adjacent states. No other metro area in Louisiana is as commanding an economic hub of a region that incorporates parts of three states as is the Shreveport-Bossier area.”

Marsala emphasized that non-resident tuition exemptions can be offered to all out-of-state students, not just those who live in the Ark-La-Tex, but the initial focus of the exemptions will be potential students in a relatively close proximity.

“The reach of local media – newspapers, radio and television stations – is well beyond the 60-mile radius to which LSUS had been restricted,” Marsala said. “While we will use a non-resident exemption to aggressively recruit any potential out-of-state student, the avenues are already in place to market LSUS to potential students who live in a much broader radius than 60 miles.”

Non-resident tuition exemptions are one step LSUS is taking in response to new Louisiana Board of Regents’ admissions criteria that go into effect next fall, raising standards for new students and shifting more of the burden of remediation to community colleges.

“With the (changing) admissions criteria,” state Commissioner of Higher Education E. Joseph Savoie said, “your pool of eligible students shrinks, so you’ve got to be more competitive. It’s not hard to figure out what will happen if you don’t do anything.”

Under the criteria for fall 2005, which were announced by the Regents in 2000, first-time freshmen (those with fewer than 12 credits of college-level work completed) will be required to score at least a 20 on the ACT (or the SAT equivalent) or have a cumulative high school grade-point average of 2.0 or higher and have no need for remedial course work. Similar criteria will be in place for students wishing to transfer to LSUS from other colleges.

For information about LSUS entrance criteria and non-resident tuition exemptions, contact the LSUS Office of Admissions and Records at 318-797-5061 or admissions@lsus.edu.