On February 3, the Purdue University Board of Trustees endorsed President Mung Chiang’s request for a 12th consecutive tuition freeze, meaning students will see no increase in tuition through at least the 2024-25 academic year. To be formally approved by the trustees in late spring per state statute, after the legislative budget setting, base undergraduate tuition at Purdue will remain at $9,992 per year for Indiana residents and $28,794 for out-of-state students through 2024-25.
Mostly through scale. Undergrad enrollment is up 22% over the last 5 years. From a ampus announcement in late 2021,
Record enrollment levels, combined with a sound investment strategy and extremely low institutional debt yielding nearly unprecedented financial stability, are paving the way for a one-time appreciation award and the largest salary merit pool in over 20 years for employees at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus.
I’ve seen no concern about salary or staffing levels, though employees would have better insight.
Purdue has offered a merit increase at the West Lafayette campus every year since 2010, with increases over the past six years ranging 2.5%-3.5%. Additionally, the university has provided appreciation awards of $750 and $500 for employees in each of the past two Decembers.
Purdue to invest $50 million in pay increases, raise minimums on grad stipends and staff wages
Staffing hasn’t grown at the same 22% rate, but my kids haven’t experienced concerns at the instruction level. Many support functions don’t need to scale with student population.
They have been adding staff and professors, and supposedly their salaries are good (but an insider would need to attest to that).
They have been doing a ton of partnering with industry and businesses, increasing the size of the incoming class, doing lots of fund raising, and they have Purdue Global.
I was curious as well, so I looked up some stats on IPEDS, comparing 2021 (most recent available year) to 2011. A summary is below. It looks like by far the largest source of increased revenue came from investment returns. Much the difference in investment revenue relates to stock market indexes being much higher in 2021 than 2011. However, beyond that, Purdue’s endowment increased by 90% over this 10 year period to $3.6 billion, a much faster rate of increase than inflation. Tuition revenue also increased substantially. It’s possible for tuition revenue to increase while tuition is held constant, if the distribution of students in different tuition groups changes. This includes things like a smaller percent of students in state, or a smaller percent receiving substantial FA.
In this example, it seems that revenue over the 10 year period increased by far more than expenses. Revenue increased by $17k per student. Expenses increased by $4k per student. This misbalance could relate to a combination of being an unrepresentative year and keeping a good portion of investment return from an especial good stock market index year in endowment.
Revenue Per Student
Tuition – $13k in 2011 → $17k in 2021
Investment Return – $7k in 2011 → $17k in 2021
Government Grants – $7k in 2011 → $8k in 2021
State Appropriations – $7k in 2011 → $6k in 2021
Private Gifts – $3k in 2011 → $5k in 2021
Other – $4k in 2011 → $5k in 2021
Expenses Per Student
Instruction – $15k in 2011 → $18k in 2021
Research – $7k in 2011 → $7k in 2021
Public Service – $4k in 2011 → $3k in 2021
Institutional Support – $4k in 2011 → $3k in 2021
Academic Support – $1k in 2011 → $3k in 2021
Student Services – $1k in 2011 → $2k in 2021
Other – $1k in 2011 → $1k in 2021
Strong leadership and common sense rule the day at Purdue. One of the few top Universities not to close down during COVID.
It’s a University that delivers a high quality education at a fair price and most importantly- graduates students ready to go into the workforce. Boiler Up!
Purdue went from 28% of 31,116 out-of-state freshmen on the 2007 - 2008 CDS to 52% out of 37,101 in 2021 - 2022.
Furthermore, they are now near the absolute bottom of the number of Pell Grant students for all public and private universities: only 29 US News Nationals have a lower percentage (13% or less). Per the Chetty data, 54% of the students are from the top income quintile and just 4% are from the bottom, and it ranks 340/369 selective publics in income mobility.
It would be great if these freezes were benefiting more middle-class and working-class families.
I took out-of-state numbers from the wrong column, freshmen rather than undergrad. The correct numbers were 27% OOS in 2007 - 2008 and 45% in 2021 - 2022. So in-state enrollment fell from 22,766 to 20,406 as OOS doubled, from 8,420 to 16,695.
It’s probably better to use the Pell rate for the entire student body, not just freshmen, given that retention and completion are so critical for that population. US News shows 18% for Michigan and 14% for Purdue.
Michigan graduates 89% of its Pell students, a gap of 6% with its non-Pell, non-Stafford students.
Purdue graduates 76% of its Pell students, a gap of 9% with its non-Pell.
There are any number of colleges we can point to as underserving Pell students; that doesn’t mean Purdue can’t also be an outlier.
