Tuition for full-time Hopkins undergraduate students for the 2013-2014 academic year stands at $45,470 — a figure $15,376 greater than the national average for private non-profit four year Universities, which the CollegeBoard reports to be $30,094.
Over the past several years, tuition fees have grown consistently, increasing by $7,770 from the 2008-2009 academic year, at which point tuition was priced at $37,700. Over this six year period, tuition has augmented at an average annual rate of 3.8 percent, a value smaller than that of the six year period prior that rose at an average rate of 5.6 percent per year. Last year’s tuition increase was 3.5 percent, the smallest percentage increase in 39 years.
Director of Hopkins Media Relations Tracey Reeves explained that these regular increases are necessary for the continued excellence and affordability of a Hopkins education.
“Regarding the cost of tuition and what it funds, research universities such as Johns Hopkins strive to provide the highest quality education possible, and to make it affordable through a range of cost-saving measures and substantial institutional financial aid program,” Reeves wrote in an email to The News-Letter.
Alongside these steady increases in tuition, President Ronald J. Daniels and his administration continue to consider building the University’s financial aid budget a priority.
“The total grant aid provided to Homewood undergraduates has increased at an average annual rate of 8.2 percent over the past five years, more than double the rate of increase in tuition and cost of attendance,” Reeves wrote.
According to Reeves, over 40 percent of undergraduate students receive financial aid to offset the cost of attending Hopkins. The current grant aid for Homewood undergraduates in this academic year is just under $75 million. This amount has increased from $50 million in 2008-2009, yielding an overall increase of 49 percent.
These increases, though, do not go unnoticed by Hopkins students.
Junior Harriet Green is bothered by the University’s lack of communication in regards to tuition costs.
“I am quite shocked that the school does not put out any notice that our tuitions are going up,” Green said. “It’s almost as if they tried to do it subtly with the hopes we wouldn’t notice.”
In the Feb. 24 issue of The JHU Politik, Editor-in-Chief Rachel Cohen published an op-ed on the topic of rising tuition at Hopkins. In her piece, Cohen criticized the absence of transparency and dialogue surrounding these rises in tuition fees.
In an email to The News-Letter, Cohen noted that she conceived the idea of writing the piece upon reading an article in The Hub about how the University would raise tuition 3.5 percent for the 2013-2014 academic year.
“Rather than acknowledging that a 3.8 percent increase in one year is a lot, and a problem, it repeatedly made the point how it was such a ‘small increase’ compared to past years. That was when I first began thinking about the way JHU tries to frame its continually rising costs,” Cohen wrote in her email.
Cohen’s message, however, is not antagonistic towards the school. Instead, she urges students and student-press institutions, such as The News-Letter, to take an active role in promoting dialogue on the subject.
“People feel awkward and uncomfortable talking about money, understandably, but we need to do it,” she wrote in her email.
Yet the University’s costs go far beyond financial aid.
According to Reeves, significant investments have been made in health services, security improvements and other student services, as well as in capital improvements to facilities on Homewood campus, such as the recently completed Undergraduate Teaching Labs or 2012’s Brody Learning Commons.
Faculty and staff are a top priority with respect to operating costs.
“As with most of the university’s divisions, the Krieger and Whiting schools’ operating costs are primarily related to faculty and staff salaries and benefits, which supports the University’s instruction and research missions,” Reeves wrote. “The Krieger school has grown its number of full-time, tenured/tenure track faculty by 10 percent since Katherine Newman assumed the school’s deanship in September 2010.”
Nevertheless, Green remains skeptical about the extent to which current students are benefitting from raised tuition fees.
“I wonder how much of tuition money directly benefits us as undergraduates,” Green said, “and how much goes straight to research.”
The board of trustees has not yet finalized by tuition for 2014–2015 school year.