The Board of Trustees approved a 3.8 percent hike in the comprehensive fee for the 2011-2012 school year, bringing the total to $56,006. This is less than the 5 percent increase seen last year. The financial aid budget will increase by 11.8 percent. The comprehensive fee includes room, board, tuition, and the student activities fee.

“Although we are mindful of the difficulties inherent in annual tuition increases, in order to maintain our high quality liberal arts programs and our scholar-teacher model, we must increase tuition in the coming year,” Roth said in an interview with the Wesleyan Connection.

Many of Wesleyan’s peer institutions have not yet released their comprehensive fees for next year, but of those that have, it appears that Wesleyan has adopted the highest increase in terms of percentage and absolute cost.

Colby College, Connecticut College, and Hamilton College increased their comprehensive fees by 1.8 percent, 0.7 percent, and 3.3 percent, to $30,182, $54,970, and $53,470, respectively. Middlebury raised its comprehensive fee by 2.5 percent to $53,420, sticking to its commitment of not raising its comprehensive fee by more than 1 percent above the annual Consumer Price Index (CPI). The CPI, which is used as a measure of inflation, rose 1.5 percent in 2010. According to Forbes.com, Wesleyan was the fourth most expensive college in 2010.