The cost of attending Duke is higher than ever. Will financial aid catch up?

Duke's upcoming tuition increase will make the total cost of attendance more expensive than that of six Ivy League schools.

Last month, the University's Board of Trustees decided to increase the total yearly cost of attendance by 3.9 percent from the current price of $65,703, making next year's term cost $68,298. The total cost includes housing and other fees in addition to tuition, which will go up by 4.3 percent. 

But Duke has not been the only school to increase its bill for the 2017-18 academic year.

Peer institutions such as Yale University, Brown University, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth University have joined Duke in increasing their prices for next year. However, each of these schools has committed to an increase in their financial aid provisions alongside the increase to costs. For example, the Yale Daily News reported that along with upping its term bill, Yale will increase expenditures for financial aid by more than 12 percent. Duke has not yet released what its financial aid spending for the upcoming year will be. 

Alison Rabil, assistant vice provost and director of financial aid, wrote in an email last week that students receiving financial aid will not have to increase their contribution if their family's financial situation “remains the same.”

“There are usually fluctuations in family income and assets from year to year, so the family contribution number can vary slightly, but generally speaking if circumstances are the same, the contribution remains constant,” Rabil wrote. 

For most peer institutions, the increase in cost of attendance is around 3.5 percent—but not all of Duke's peers have joined in this trend. Although Harvard University and Princeton University increased their term bills last year, they have not yet indicated whether they intend to do so this year. The University of North Carolina also faces a different situation. Duke's Tobacco Road rival is limited by decisions in the state legislature, which recently allowed returning in-state students to pay the same tuition they had the year prior. 

Last year, The Chronicle spoke with Charles Clotfelter, Z. Smith Reynolds professor of public policy studies, to discuss why universities continue to raise their tuition. He said that colleges suffered from “cost disease”—using “technology that doesn’t lend itself to technological progress or increases in productivity.” They also raise tuition "because they can, and they want to get better."

“[Colleges] are able to raise their prices relative to inflation, so why don’t they worry about poor people?” Clotfelter said. “They don’t have to as long as there is a robust financial aid system that can presumably make it feasible for people with less resources to attend college.”

Recently, a New York Times article found that the median family income of a Duke student is $186,700—higher than that of students at Princeton, Harvard, Stanford and a number of other comparable universities. 

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag wrote in an email that although socioeconomic diversity is important to the admissions office, he can see how the cost of tuition could be a deterrent to low-income families.

“I think encouraging families who couldn’t otherwise afford private universities like Duke to apply for admission and for financial aid has been an issue for decades,” he wrote. “I think it was exacerbated by the recession, but it’s been an issue since I started in admissions almost 35 years ago. Colleges, community-based organizations and organizations like the College Board continue to encourage families of all incomes to apply, but there’s always a lot to be done, and more to do, in this area.”

Guttentag said the admissions office tries to attract low income students by discussing financial aid and scholarships in all of its programs and subsidizing travel costs to Blue Devil Days, the Black Student Alliance Invitational and the Latinx Student Recruitment Weekend.

Clotfelter noted that the increase in tuition has had a mixed impact on socioeconomic diversity at Duke but has negatively impacted middle income families.

“It turns out the percentage of students at selective colleges whose family income is $50,000 or less hasn’t gone down, but the percentage of students with family incomes above $250,000 has gone up," he said. "So what you’re seeing is a squeezing of the middle."


Likhitha Butchireddygari

Follow Likhitha on Twitter

Class of 2019

Editor-in-chief 2017-18, 

Local and national news department head 2016-17

Born in Hyderabad, India, Likhitha Butchireddygari moved to Baltimore at a young age. She is pursuing a Program II major entitled "Digital Democracy and Data" about the future of the American democracy.

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