There's always something else to pay for. With room and board, textbooks, meal plans and tuition payments, Elon University students and their families are persistently being presented with bills.

As a follow-up piece concerning the discussions about Elon's 2011-2012 academic budget, I am writing an article this week about how the recently approved 3.98 percent increase in tuition will affect students and their families.

Although the increase is the lowest its been in over a decade, students expressed concerns about the consistent, yearly price raises Elon enforces, saying each slight growth leads to more pressure to pay the bills. Some also said they wished administration would consider outside factors such as siblings' educations, loans, parents' incomes and scholarships more heavily when determining how much the institution's finances should increase.

For more information, check out this week's issue of the Pendulum, 2/23, to see what other students and their families are doing to make ends meet.

-Sam Parker, Senior Reporter