Trustees sign off on Purdue budget, eighth year of frozen tuition

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue trustees on Friday (June 14) approved the tuition and fee schedule for the 2020 and 2021 fiscal years and the university’s operating budget for the 2020 fiscal year.

Tuition will remain frozen on Purdue’s main campus for the seventh and eighth consecutive years — through the 2020-21 academic year — keeping base undergraduate tuition and fees for Indiana residents under $10,000 per year. With the exception of flight program fees, which will increase by 3% in fiscal year 2020 and 5.6% in fiscal year 2021, all general fees also will be held steady.

The total cost of attending Purdue continues to be less today than in 2012, with tuition held flat and lower room and board rates and, as a result, the university continues to receive more applications annually than ever before. Students and their families will have saved more than half a billion dollars on educational expenses by 2021, versus what they would have paid if Purdue had increased tuition and fees at national averages.

Those savings already have helped decrease total student borrowing by 33% since 2012, despite having more students on campus each year since. Six graduating cohorts will have seen no increase in tuition since their arrival, and 59% of Purdue undergraduates graduate debt-free today, compared with 46% in 2012. Purdue is now the third most affordable Big Ten school for resident students and the second most affordable Big Ten school for nonresident students.

Tuition and fees at Purdue University Northwest and Purdue University Fort Wayne will follow the Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s recommended increase of up to 1.65% each year of the biennium. In addition, Purdue Fort Wayne will introduce an additional tuition charge for international students of $24.90 per credit hour or $373.50 per semester for undergraduates and $31.57 per credit hour for graduate students, and a differential fee for the College of Visual and Performing Arts at $25 per credit hour for undergraduates and $31.57 per credit hour for graduate students, which will be phased in over two years at 50% each year.

For fiscal year 2020, the Indiana General Assembly appropriated $301.3 million for the West Lafayette campus, $52.5 million for Purdue Northwest and $47.7 million for Purdue Fort Wayne, an overall decrease of 1.01% in state appropriations, driven by a decline primarily in the university’s fee replacement appropriation reflecting lower outstanding debt.

In addition, as part of the biennial budget, the state appropriated funds for the construction of the new Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital ($73 million) and the Engineering and Polytech Gateway building ($60 million).

The university’s all-funds operating budget for fiscal year 2020 supports educational, operating and strategic investment expenditures. Trustees endorsed the following total operating expenditures for fiscal year 2020:

• At the West Lafayette campus: $2.14 billion.
• At Purdue Northwest: $159.1 million.
• At Purdue Fort Wayne: $155.6 million.

Included in the West Lafayette expenditures is $12 million in strategic investments targeted to four key areas:

• Enrollment growth in STEM areas, particularly in the College of Engineering, College of Science and School of Nursing.
• Funding for the Integrated Data Science Initiative.
• Expansion of the University Development Office.
• Strategic growth in the Krannert School of Management, predominantly the Industrial Management undergraduate program.

Revenues are budgeted at $2.5 billion and are expected to exceed expenditures by $76 million.

Source: Chris Ruhl, 765-494-5166, ruhlc@purdue.edu