My D was admitted to business class 2022 and received a “Personal Financial Aid and Enrollment Guide” in the mail a few days ago. It included “Your Estimated Cost of Attendance” which outlined tuition and fees of $35,310 and R&B of $12,864 for “total direct cost” of $48,174. She received no FA except for an unsubsidized Federal Direct Loan.
Comparing these charges to the prior year (2017-2018) year I came up with Tuition and fees 6.5% higher this year and Room & Board 4.3% higher for overall increased COA of 5.9%. That is a significant increase, too much in one year I think. Certainly far outstripping inflation.
Please tell me that the “differential charge” of $1000 for 2018-2019 is already included in the above charges. Within the “estimated cost of attendance” paragraph it states “the costs reflected here are estimated based on your anticipated program of study for the upcoming academic year.” Therefore, since they know D is doing business and they were already aware of the implementation of the “differential charge” my hope is that the $1000 d.c. is already included. If the d.c. is not already included in the listed charges I think it’s a little misleading.
Am I correct in my hope/assumption that the d.c. is already included? If not then U Del is becoming ridiculously expensive way too fast. With scheduled additional increases of $1500 the following year and then $2500 for all years thereafter, on top of usual yearly cost increases, it means that Udel will be starting to approach some of the cheaper private university COA. Maybe not much of a value anymore. My D was seriously considering it but not so sure now if these charges are in addition to the already listed charges above.