The Johns Hopkins Gazette: March 27, 2000
March 27, 2000
VOL. 29, NO. 29

  

2000-2001 Tuitions Are Announced

By Dennis O'Shea
Homewood
Johns Hopkins Gazette Online Edition

Tuition for more than half of The Johns Hopkins University's 18,000 students will increase by 4 percent or less in the 2000- 2001 academic year, continuing a recent trend of slowed growth in charges for both the university's full-time and part-time students.

Tuition for full-time students in the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering, however, will rise 5.4 percent, reflecting the costs of operating the new student arts center, which will open this fall.

The tuition increases were approved by the university's board of trustees at its February meeting.

"The president and trustees are very serious about controlling costs and keeping increases in tuition to a minimum, and by and large we are continuing to see smaller and smaller percentage increases," said Steven Knapp, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. "The only major exception this year, at the Homewood schools, is entirely associated with new costs that will come from operating the student arts center, a building that will greatly contribute to improved campus life for all Homewood students."

The 50,000-square-foot arts center, now under construction along Charles Street near 33rd Street at the Homewood campus, will provide much-needed rehearsal, studio, office and gathering space for student groups and areas for working with digital media. It also will house performance facilities and a small theater. Construction of the $17 million building is being supported by gifts to the university; operational costs must be paid from tuition.

The $1,270 increase for full-time undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in Arts and Sciences and Engineering will raise tuition there to $24,930. The current tuition is $23,660.

Federal antitrust law prohibits universities from exchanging advance information on tuition, so it is not yet clear how the university's 2000-2001 full-time undergraduate charges will compare to those at many other private universities. Tuition prices announced so far include a range of increases from 6 percent at Stanford ($24,441), to 4.2 percent at Cornell ($24,760) and MIT ($26,050) to 2.9 percent at Harvard ($22,694) and Yale ($25,200).

At Hopkins, room and board for Homewood undergraduates will increase 4 percent, to $8,185 (based on a 19-meal plan and a double room in the Alumni Memorial Residences). The total of tuition, room and board for undergraduates living on campus will rise 5 percent to $33,121, from the current $31,530.

More than 50 percent of Homewood undergraduates, however, receive need-based financial aid and do not pay that total cost. The university's financial aid packages have improved significantly--with larger grants and smaller loans--since Michael R. Bloomberg, chairman of the board of trustees, designated two-thirds of a $45 million 1998 pledge to the university for financial aid.

"Mr. Bloomberg's gift has been critical in another way as well," said Lorna Miles Whalen, dean of admissions and enrollment. "Leveraging his generosity has helped tremendously in attracting additional commitments for student aid, which has been set by the president and trustees as one of the university's top fund-raising priorities."

The increase for Homewood campus graduate students decouples their tuition from what had been a uniform rate charged to many full-time graduate students across the university. Graduate students at other campuses who had been paying the uniform rate will see their tuition increase from the current $23,660 to either $24,600 (at Public Health and for Ph.D. students at the School of Advanced International Studies and Ph.D. and M.S.N./M.P.H. students at Nursing) or $24,700 (Ph.D. students at Medicine). Those increases range from 4 percent to 4.4 percent, continuing a general downward trend in the rate of increase and marking the fourth straight increase of significantly less than 5 percent. Previously, the benchmark tuition at Hopkins had climbed at around 5 percent a year for five consecutive years, and between 6 percent and 16 percent a year for the nine years before that.

Tuition increases for part-time students in the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education and the School of Engineering--who account for about 37 percent of all Hopkins students--will range from 2.5 percent to 3.9 percent. The university's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies is holding its tuition increase for master's degree and other full-time nondoctoral students to 3 percent or less for the fifth year in a row. That tuition this fall will go up $600, or 2.8 percent, to $22,400.

M.D. students at the School of Medicine pay the same tuition in each of their four years at Hopkins. The rate for entering students this fall will be $27,000, a 3.8 percent increase.

All full-time Peabody Conservatory students--both undergraduate and graduate--will see a 4.6 percent increase to $22,700.

The largest percentage increase in tuition is 16.6 percent for full-time master of science in nursing students. The School of Nursing, the university's newest, has charged much lower tuition than the more-established divisions, and this year's increase will bring its master's degree tuition to $20,115, closer to, but still well below, that at other Hopkins schools.

A complete list of next year's full-time and part-time tuition rates in all divisions is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/jhuinfo/tuition.


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