Tuition for full-time liberal arts and engineering undergraduates at the Johns Hopkins University will increase 3.5 percent this fall while the financial aid budget supporting those students rises 5 percent.
The increase of $1,700 will bring 2016-2017 full tuition to $50,410 for undergraduates in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering. The nearly 5,400 undergraduates in those schools study at the university's Homewood campus in northern Baltimore.
Nearly half of Homewood undergraduate students—about 48 percent—receive need-based aid from the university and do not pay the full tuition price. The average grant aid to those students covers nearly two-thirds of the total cost of attendance, which includes tuition, fees, room and board.
The total 2016-2017 undergraduate aid budget for the Krieger and Whiting schools will be a record $88 million, up $5 million from the current year. That's a 14 percent increase over the past two years and a 73 percent boost since 2009.
The university's president since then, Ronald J. Daniels, has made undergraduate financial aid a priority. Johns Hopkins recently announced that its fundraising campaign, Rising to the Challenge, has been extended a year, to June 2018. Among its goals for the extended campaign, the university aims to add $55 million to the $60 million already raised for endowed undergraduate aid.
The Krieger and Whiting schools have now limited undergraduate tuition hikes to 3.5 percent for four years in a row and kept them below 4 percent for eight straight years; those eight years represent the eight smallest tuition increase percentages since the 1974-1975 academic year.
While restraining tuition increases, Johns Hopkins continues to aggressively check the growth of expenses. The university, for instance, has been making procurement changes and has identified potential savings of roughly $15 million a year university-wide on items like office supplies, computer hardware and software, temporary labor, laboratory equipment maintenance and travel.
Tuition supports both ongoing costs and enhancements in the student experience, including faculty recruitment; undergraduate research opportunities; library and classroom enhancements; and investments in student health and wellness, information technology, security and other important student services.
Homewood room and board rates—for a typical double room and 19-meal-per-week board plan—will climb 3 percent this fall, to $14,976. That will bring the total cost of tuition, room and board to $65,386, up 3.4 percent from the current academic year.
Tuition for other Johns Hopkins undergraduates
A 3.5 percent tuition increase will also apply to the nearly 300 undergraduate musicians studying full-time at the university's Peabody Conservatory at Baltimore's Mount Vernon Place. Their 2016-2017 tuition will be $44,122, up $1,491 from the current $42,631.
The School of Nursing is ending its undergraduate program at the end of the 2015-2016 academic year. It will now focus on educating advanced practice and research nurses at the master's and doctoral levels.
Posted in University News
