Tuition, fees to rise 3.3 percent; big jump in financial-aid budget

Published in Feb. 24, 2010, Issue

Tuition in 2010–11 will be $36,640 (up 3.7 percent); room, $6,467 (up 2 percent); and board, $5,473 (up 2.5 percent). The financial-aid office estimates that students spend $3,600 on other fees and personal expenses, so the total cost of a year at Princeton will rise to about $52,180.

While the tuition and fee increase is higher than last year’s (2.9 percent), it still ranks among Princeton’s lowest in the last four decades.

A larger allotment for the University’s no-loan financial-aid program will support an expected increase in the percentage of undergraduates receiving aid. More than 60 percent of this year’s freshmen are on aid, and as much as 63 percent of the Class of 2014 could be on aid, according to a prepared statement by the University. In 2009-10, the average grant for a student on financial aid was $36,000.

Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 said in the statement that the fee increase “strikes a reasonable balance that recognizes both the University’s budgetary challenges and the need to avoid putting unnecessary burdens on tuition-paying families.”

1 Response

David E. Jordan ’50

8 Years Ago

Reading the article on the increase in tuition and fees (Notebook, Feb. 24) inspired my first letter to PAW. The rise, to $52,180 in costs for next year, brought to mind what it cost me to attend Princeton just after the war. How times have changed! Still, financial aid remains vital.

After considering my scholarship, student jobs, and summer employment, it cost my widowed mother $500 the first year, $1,000 the second, $1,500 the third, and finally $2,000 for my senior year — a total of $5,000 for my Princeton education.

When considering what all the assistance from the University meant to me, I am truly thankful for all that everyone contributed. It became possible for me to become, among other things, a lawyer, a colonel in the Army, a federal judge, and now to attend my 60th reunion. Donations to Annual Giving and chairmanship of a class mini-reunion have helped to repay that obligation. Student assistance does make a great life for people like me possible.