On June 28, President Erickson sent out an email regarding the tuition and fees set by the Board of Trustees. The email covered increases in tuition, due dates for tuition bills, grant eligibility and the $100 dining credit for uploading vaccination information into The Bridge.

In the email, Erickson addressed that Northern had two goals in mind for the meeting and that was to address the rising costs Northern is facing while using federal stimulus-funded grants to help lower costs of attendance as students and their families continue to recover from COVID-19 

“Although the Michigan Legislature has not yet completed the state appropriations process for higher education, the board did not want students and their families to have to wait until the state’s budget is finalized since there are signs that may not happen quickly,” Erickson said. “If we’re going to have to estimate state funding, it seems prudent to do so now and give students and families as much planning time as possible.”

The board increased tuition by $252 per semester for both residential and non-residential undergraduates. This is a 4.2% increase. Graduate programs and Global Campus tuitions both increased by 4.2% as well. With the increase in tuition, the board also approved grants starting at $750 that will be funded by the Higher Education Emergency Fund for full-time and part-time (pro-rated) students. 

“The grants effectively lower most full-time resident students’ tuition and fee charges from a year ago by a minimum of $123 per semester,” Erickson said.

Erickson sent out another email on July 22 regarding more information about the grant and how students can choose how the grant money will be applied to their semester bills. Students have the choice to have the funds be applied to their Fall 2021 balance or directly to them for other pandemic-related items. 

The grant amounts fall under three ways that are up to $1,000.

— Undergraduate students enrolled in six or more credits who are Pell Grant eligible for Fall 2021 can receive $1,000. Pell-eligible undergraduates taking five or fewer credits can receive $250.

— Undergraduates enrolled in six or more credits who are not Pell Grant eligible for Fall 2021 can receive $750. Undergraduates taking five or fewer credits can receive $250.

— Graduate students with four or more credit hours are eligible for $750 while those enrolled in three or fewer hours can receive $250.

Students who still need to fill this information out will need to go to the Fall 2021 Federal Stimulus Grant portal. From there, students will need to choose how they would like their grant to be applied to their Fall 2021 semester. The process is straightforward and takes two minutes.

— Open the Fall 2021 Federal Stimulus Grant portal and log into your MyNMU account.

— Read through the brief information covering what the grant is and how it will be applied, eligibility requirements for the grant and maximum grant coverage.

— Choose whether to have funds be applied to the Fall 2021 balance or sent directly to a mailing address that will go towards other pandemic-related items.

Fall 2021 tuition bills were due on August 13 and funds from the grant that were not applied towards the semester balance will be mailed to the mailing address on file.