Expanded program covers contiguous states from Kansas to Ohio to Texas

In a move to accelerate enrollment growth and attract more students from throughout the Midwest, the University of Missouri-Kansas City has expanded two non-resident tuition programs.

UMKC has created a new Kansas Rate, which will enable residents of every county in the Sunflower State to enroll at a rate equivalent to the in-state rates of Missouri students.

Under the new Heartland Rate tuition program, students who are residents of 15 contiguous Midwestern states will pay just 150 percent of the in-state rate for Missouri residents, a significant savings over out-of-state tuition rates.

The new Kansas rate is equal to the in-state rate of $278 per student credit hour. The new Heartland Rate is $417 per student credit hour, compared to $768.90 for residents of states outside the Heartland region, and $278 per student credit hour for Missouri residents.

The two programs were approved by the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri System earlier today. Both new rates go into effect for Fall Semester 2018, beginning in August.

“People in the Greater Kansas City area and the state of Missouri have long known the value UMKC provides,” said Barbara A. Bichelmeyer, Ph.D., interim chancellor and provost of UMKC. “Now we’re ready to expand our horizons. Our university offers outstanding undergraduate research opportunities, a low student-faculty ratio, and the opportunity to engage with a major American city as both a great place to learn and a great place to live. We can’t afford to allow cost to be a barrier to young people who appreciate those advantages and view UMKC as the perfect launching pad for their careers.”

The new Kansas Rate comes as several universities in Kansas have recently expanded various special-rate programs to attract more students from Missouri, in an increasingly competitive environment for college recruiting.

The new Heartland Rate represents an expansion of an existing program in which UMKC already participates, the Midwest Student Exchange Program. That compact is a reciprocal agreement for universities in the states of North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, where institutions in each state agree to let students from other states attend for 150 percent of instate tuition. The Heartland Rate at UMKC removes other restrictions of the MSEP compact and adds the states of South Dakota, Iowa, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas, but without a reciprocal agreement with schools in those states.