Tuition Boost OK'd by Board The board of trustees has voted to raise the university's benchmark tuition by 5.1 percent next year, to $19,750. The board voted at its February meeting to hike tuition for full-time undergraduates in Arts and Sciences and Engineering by $950, from the current figure of $18,800. It will be the third straight year of tuition increases around 5 percent, after increases as recently as five years ago that ranged above 7 percent. Universities are prohibited by antitrust law from exchanging advance information on future tuition and fees. But Hopkins' tuition has in recent years been slightly below the median among schools with which the university competes for students, Provost Joseph Cooper said. The $19,750 Homewood undergraduate tuition rate will also apply to a number of other categories of students, including full-time graduate students in Arts and Sciences and Engineering, doctoral students at SAIS, doctoral and some master's degree students at Nursing and at Public Health, and Ph.D. students in Medicine. First-year M.D. candidates will pay the university's highest full-time tuition, $21,800, an increase of 6.3 percent. Medical students pay the same tuition each of their four years at Hopkins. Tuition increases in other full-time programs range from 5 percent, to $19,425, for master's degree candidates at SAIS, to 7.1 percent, to $15,000, for undergraduates and some master's degree candidates in Nursing. Tuition for part-time Continuing Studies master's degree courses in liberal arts and education in Washington, D.C., will hold steady at $315 a credit hour. The largest percentage increase in part-time tuition is 9.1 percent, to $1,195 a course, for master's-level courses in science in Arts and Sciences.