Cost to Attend Duke to Rise 4.8 Percent
Trustees approve increasing endowment support for financial aid by 28 percent.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Durham, NC -- The Duke University Board of Trustees on Friday approved a 4.8 percent increase for the total cost to attend Duke in the coming school year. The plan calls for a 5 percent tuition increase for undergraduate students.
The trustees also approved a 28 percent increase in funding from the university’s endowment for all categories of financial aid, to provide increased support for graduate and professional students as well as for undergraduates.
Overall, Duke expects to increase its undergraduate financial aid expenditures by more than 17 percent to about $86 million in 2008-09. More than 40 percent of Duke undergraduates receive need-based aid to help meet their college costs.
Provost Peter Lange, the university’s senior academic official, said Duke has deliberately focused its efforts on relieving the financial burden for students from lower- and middle-income families, reflecting the university’s commitment to make Duke affordable to all students.
“Duke carefully manages the resources we receive from donor support, endowment returns, tuition payments and other sources to invest in the quality of our faculty and the educational experience of our students,” Lange said. “Thus, for more than a decade, our investments in financial aid have risen at a far faster rate than tuition.”
Tuition for students enrolled in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and the Pratt School of Engineering will be $36,065 for 2008-09, up 5 percent from $34,335 for the current year. About 82 percent of Duke undergraduates are enrolled in Trinity College; 18 percent matriculate in the Pratt School.
The total cost to attend Duke this coming school year, including room and board, will be $47,985, an increase of 4.8 percent from 2007-08. The trustees on Friday also approved new tuition rates for Duke’s graduate and professional schools.
In December, Duke President Richard H. Brodhead announced significant enhancements to the university’s financial aid program to benefit lower- and middle-income families. These changes included: eliminating parental contributions for families who make less than $60,000 a year; making it possible for students from families with incomes below $40,000 to graduate debt-free; reducing loans for students from families with incomes up to $100,000; and capping loans for eligible families with incomes above $100,000.
The new initiatives -- expected to benefit as many as 2,500 of Duke’s 6,250 undergraduates -- are projected to increase average grant support $2,500 annually for each need-based aid recipient, reducing the average costs to these students and their families by $10,000 over four years. In 2007-08, the average need-based aid grant was about $26,700 out of total charges of $46,000. Officials estimate that next year’s average need-based grant will exceed $30,000.
Duke is one of a limited number of schools with a “need-blind” admissions policy, which means that all U.S. applicants are accepted regardless of their ability to pay for college. Duke guarantees it will meet 100 percent of demonstrated financial need. Financial aid packages combine grants, loans and work-study opportunities after assessing what parents and students can reasonably contribute.
When announcing the financial aid enhancements in December, Brodhead said the increased investment was made possible with earnings on the university’s endowment and funds contributed to Duke’s Financial Aid Initiative (FAI), a $300-million fund-raising effort scheduled to end in December 2008.
The FAI seeks new endowment of $245 million for undergraduate aid and $55 million to support graduate and professional school students. To date, the university has received more than $261 million in gifts and pledges to support this effort, including a recently announced endowment gift of $20 million from trustee Bruce Karsh and his wife Martha to support international undergraduate students.
When the FAI was unveiled in December 2005, Brodhead said financial aid was “crucial to Duke’s long-term ability to attract the very best students and to make quality education affordable for all families,” adding that it is a permanent and fundamental obligation of the university.
In recent years, the university has made several other modifications to its need-based financial aid formula that have expanded the number of students eligible for aid and increased the amount of aid received by eligible students. And Duke’s new DukeEngage program will provide full financial support to all students who undertake intensive service activities in the U.S. or across the globe.
The tuition rates for 2008-09 for the graduate and professional schools are:
Divinity School -- $16,570, up 4.5 percent over the current year.
Fuqua School of Business -- $44,100 (daytime MBA), up 5.8 percent.
Graduate School -- $36,190, up 6 percent.
Law School -- $42,160, up 5.5 percent.
Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences -- $27,600, up 3.8 percent.
School of Medicine -- $41,126, up 5.5 percent.
School of Nursing -- $36,900, up 13.9 percent.
The proposed nursing school increase reflects its expanded programs and will put it more in line with tuition charged at peer schools, Lange said.
Final decisions on the budget, including tuition levels for Duke’s schools and Trinity College, will be approved at the trustees’ meeting in May.
