Tuition for full-time liberal arts and engineering undergraduates at Johns Hopkins University will increase 3.5 percent this fall while the financial aid budget for those students rises 7 percent.
The increase, $1,650, will bring the 2015-2016 tuition to $48,710 for undergraduates in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering. The more than 5,300 undergrads in those schools study at the university's Homewood campus in northern Baltimore.
About 47 percent of Homewood undergraduate students receive need-based financial aid and do not pay full tuition. The average financial aid grant to those students covers nearly 60 percent of the total cost of attendance, which includes tuition, fees, and room and board.
The total 2015-2016 undergraduate aid budget for the Krieger and Whiting schools is $83 million, a 64 percent boost since 2009. The university's president since that time, Ronald J. Daniels, has made undergraduate student aid a priority of his administration.
Johns Hopkins' fundraising campaign, Rising to the Challenge, includes a universitywide goal of $753 million for student aid, $225 million of which is allocated for undergraduate financial aid. Already committed gifts for undergraduate aid include $100 million from philanthropist and former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a 1964 Johns Hopkins engineering graduate, and $59 million from other alumni and friends.
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.
The Krieger and Whiting schools have now kept undergraduate tuition hikes below 4 percent for seven consecutive years; those seven years represent the seven smallest tuition increase percentages since the 1974-1975 academic year.
While restraining tuition increases, Johns Hopkins continues working aggressively to check the growth of expenses. The university, for instance, has begun making procurement changes expected to save $10 million a year universitywide on items like office supplies, software, temporary labor, laboratory equipment maintenance, and travel.
Homewood campus room and board rates—for a typical double room and "anytime" meal plan—will climb 2.1 percent this fall, to $14,540. That will bring the total cost of tuition and room and board to $63,250, up 3.2 percent from the 2014-15 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 in Baltimore's Mount Vernon neighborhood. Their 2015-2016 tuition will be $42,631, up $1,442 from the current $41,189.
The School of Nursing, with as many as 500 full-time undergrads studying in accelerated programs on the university's East Baltimore campus, will increase undergraduate tuition by 4 percent. Tuition for the 13-month accelerated track will be $71,784 for the entire program, up $2,760 from the current $69,024. The School of Nursing has announced it will end its undergraduate program after 2015-2016 and will focus on educating advanced practice and research nurses at the master's and doctoral levels.
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