News Release

Tuition for undergraduate students at The Johns Hopkins University's Homewood campus will rise next year to $33,900, a 7.2 percent increase that will enable the university to cover new operating costs without cutbacks in critical programs for students.

The increase of $2,280 from this year's $31,620 tuition was approved by the board of trustees at its December meeting. The boost is $800 larger than the increase of $1,480, or 4.9 percent, that went into effect this fall for undergraduates in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and then Whiting School of Engineering.

Since adoption of a security action plan last winter, the university has diverted more than $2 million from other spending and from budgetary reserves into safety and security enhancements at Homewood and in nearby neighborhoods.

President William R. Brody recently announced plans to invest another $1.9 million to complete a network of "smart" closed-circuit TV cameras and build an advanced security communications center. As with the earlier improvements, all the one-time capital costs are being funded from elsewhere in the university's budgets.

But without the tuition increase approved for next fall, Brody said, Johns Hopkins would not be able to pay the increased annual operating costs associated with the security improvements and still cover inflation and financial aid. The university would have been forced to roll back recent improvements in undergraduate academics and student life, and delay others.

"That we will not do," Brody said. "We are not going to cut into the quality of a Johns Hopkins education or slow our progress in enhancing the undergraduate experience."

Johns Hopkins has held most undergraduate tuition increases in recent years under 5 percent, well below the levels of earlier decades.

Brody said that, though there are no guarantees, the trustees "do not envision this level of increase as setting a precedent" for future years. He also said that the schools continue to work to hold costs down and to raise new funds through the "Johns Hopkins: Knowledge for the World" campaign.

"Johns Hopkins will continue to work diligently to control expenses and keep our cost of attendance competitive with those of other private national universities," the president said. The university's current tuition ranks 12th among a group of 18 peer private universities, including the entire Ivy League, Stanford, MIT and Chicago.

Brody's message to parents and students is available online at webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/today/tuitionltr.cfm.

A set of "frequently asked questions" on next year's tuition is also online at webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/today/tuitionq&a.cfm.

Next year's tuition rates for all the university's programs are available at webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/information_about_hopkins/ facts_and_statistics/tuition_and_financial_aid/ index.cfm.