<p>Today, the tuition and room and board have been posted on the ND website for 2009-2010. The tuition will be $38,480 and the room and board is $10,370. Personal expenses and books are obviously extra. It will be hitting over $50,000 for 2010-2011!</p>
<p>not good by ND to do this with the current economic environment. They should have set the example and announced a freeze on costs this year.</p>
<p>As I calculate it, that's a 4.65 % increase in costs which may be good compared to comparable institutions but still exceeds inflation as it has for about the past 15 years. I love ND but would have expected a bit more from them as well after the losses most of us have incurred, even with very conservative investments.. I have three younger children and ND will probably not be on their list of college choices. The financial strain is just too difficult.</p>
<p>my son has been admitted by EA for 2013, so we are wrestling with this decision, but ALL the early admits I know and doubrfull they will attend because of the economy. I hope ND's administration is listening or reading these blogs.</p>
<p>I know cost was a major reason in my decision not to attend next year personally. It wasn't the only reason, of course, but it definitely played a role which is pretty unfortunate.</p>
<p>There are two sides of it. Yes, the tuition is high, I paid full price for my time there. However, ND has a lot of people that they employ and those people are suffering a great deal as well. Yes, it would have been nice if there had been a freeze, but that is really hard to do in this economic environment. I am sure bookstore sales are down, merchandise worldwide is down, the university is hurting too. </p>
<p>I really hope everyone finds a way to attend ND, and I wish tuition was lower, but I didn't see a whole lot of waste when I was there. Look at how much Fr. Jenkins' salary is (which goes to the order anyway) compared with any other major university. We are saving over a million dollars there. Charlie Weis' salary is high, but the football program brings in enough money to cover it.</p>
<p>It takes money to have a world-class faculty and facilities, and as someone working toward a PhD, I can tell you that research costs A LOT. For me personally, I have to make over 10,000 copies for my master's thesis project, and that is only the copies. I have to drive up to three hours for each participant because I do suicide attempter research. To be a world-class university you have to support research like this, and it all costs money.</p>
<p>I think ND is a good steward of the money they are given. It is a TON of money, I know, I make $10k a year now as a graduate student so I know how much money that is a year. However, it is what it takes to run the university. They aren't sitting on mounds of cash, they are hurting just like the rest of us.</p>
<p>you said "However, ND has a lot of people that they employ and those people are suffering a great deal as well"......what??????</p>
<p>as far as I know, there has not been 5-10% , lay-offs, 10% budget cuts, etc. at ND .. as is happening in my compnay and my wife's.</p>
<p>You aren't the only person with investments. A lot of the people who work at ND (especially the dining hall) are retired and use their jobs as supplemental income. Everyone else has a 401-k or retirement plan just like you likely do.</p>
<p>Do you really want them to can people? Yes, increasing tuition stinks, but there are enough people who will still be able to afford it. Does it stink, yes it stinks that they had to raise tuition 4%, but that is better than letting people go in my opinion. Perhaps we have different values.</p>
<p>I don't know what you do but would you rather have layoffs at your company or increase your prices 4% when you still have more demand than supply? I would keep my employees. It is possible they have increased scholarships as well, I am not sure. Raising tuition some hurts the students and parents, no doubt about it, but it may be better than sending people to the streets or reducing the quality of the education ND provides.</p>
<p>FYI-MiPerson:</p>
<p>Tuition-</p>
<p>Yale $49,000
Duke $50,750</p>
<p>These numbers are for 2008-2009. It will be interesting to see if these institutions "freeze" their spending. I suspect there is a lot of wasteful spending at these institutions as well.</p>
<p>A slight distinction needs to be made though, irish68178, with your metaphor. I agree with you on this issue, but it cannot be the same as the company raising prices 4% when demand still exceeds supply. When Notre Dame accepts people for their class they assume a certain yield and try to use that yield to gauge how many people and what caliber of student they should accept. If the pricetag of the situation interferes with their yield percentage for the students they accept, the only people who will be affected are those who ARE accepted (high enough caliber) but not able to afford. Is that how you want to select your incoming class?</p>
<p>This is a contrived issue because Notre Dame still claims to meet 100% of demonstrated need which will go up because of a.) layoffs across the country and b.) 4% pricetag increase. So, this is just not tacking money on to customer/students, they are still doing everything in their effort to provide for the students in need of the money.</p>
<p>In fact, one could argue that the 4% is almost a tax on those who can afford to pay the full price to help those who have been affected most by the economy...just a thought.</p>
<p>I don't know CitricAcid, the people on the waitlist are very competitive, and the difference between them and those accepted at first may only be 10 to 20 points on the SAT. I wish everyone who gets in could go to ND, I really do, but there are choices we all make and I really don't think that ND will sacrifice quality. I will bet anyone who wants to bet $20 each that the average SAT will not drop more than 20 points from last year.</p>
<p>Scuttlebutt is that kids are rearranging their schedules to graduate early (most can due to AP credit) and anecdotal evidence of transfer inquiries. </p>
<p>DD has three friends who are all applying to state schools to transfer because ND is just simply too expensive and parents who were able to cover costs have lost jobs or no longer feel they can safely borrow.</p>
<p>btw, CitricAcid, sorry, I know I basically re-stated what you said. I wanted to attribute it to you last night but the site went down.</p>
<p>Notre Dame needs to realize that a lot of parents are going to send in $500 to reserve their kid's place, while also sending in $250 to the public safety state school. </p>
<p>Then they will watch how the economy does in the next few months before making the committment.</p>
<p>So ND might be scrambling at the last minute to fill these slots.</p>
<p>Also, I agree, the situation now is a lot different, where before parents were willing to borrow money because they had job security. Now we don't and we do not to want to take on debt. </p>
<p>Yield will drop this year, I bet it could go from 57% to less than 30%. </p>
<p>You can also tell by the blog entries here who are the parents (stressed out) and who the kids are (not my problem).</p>
<p>I am sorry to hear about DD and her kids. Was ND not able to improve their financial aid? They should adjust it based on those life events!</p>
<p>MiPerson80, who is to say that they do not realize this? They may accept more students or adjust financial aid, it is not just a price raise without consequences or adjustments.</p>
<p>"You can also tell by the blog entries here who are the parents (stressed out) and who the kids are (not my problem). " - MiPerson80</p>
<p>MiPerson80, there is no reason to call those who disagree with you kids. You assume that we don't carry the load of a ND education, which isn't true. I am paying for my ND education, and I am sure I am not the only one. I simply have a different perspective than you, you see things from the parent side of view, I see things as an educator. Calling those who disagree with you (which I think is mainly me) a "kid" is not fair. I teach at a major university, why am I not an educator instead of a "kid" who doesn't get it?</p>
<p>It costs money to educate, and to have the very best, it costs a lot of money. It isn't just at ND, this is a nationwide problem (there is a video on CNN about it right now). ND is going to cause people to go into debt, a lot of debt, that is what happened to me. One has to choose if they want the debt and ND or if they want a state school, and I choose ND. At the end of the day, this year is like every other year, people will have to choose if they go to ND or a state school and the difference will be huge.</p>
<p>If you want to help save up for ND, I will bet MiPerson80 $100 that the matriculation rate does not go under 40%. I believe it won't go under 50% honestly, but I wouldn't bet as much money on that :).</p>
<p>since I live in the real world, and not academia, let me point something out. Companies and colleges sometime raise price because they can, not because they need to. ND benchmarks itself against the ivies to find the market acceptable price to charge and also there is a lot of signaling going on between these schools. The only reason schools increased student aid, especially like how HYP has increased need, was because what Senator Grassley of Iowa did, to try to force the schools to increase aid and tell them they need to spend 5% of their endowment.</p>
<p>Also, I meant "kids" to be students.</p>
<p>Parent here and Miperson knows it. We just returned from Jr Parents Weekend. I will state again that we have no regrets helping our student obtain a ND education; only one more year to go. One of the things that struck me as we visited our student's program major this weekend was the statement that the professors don't "buy" out. Meaning--they teach the courses rather than TAs (no offense, Irish). At $45,000++, we feel we are getting our money's worth. Our student was admitted to several well-known colleges (Top 20) that we know for a fact have mostly TAs teaching the courses. I am not interested in paying this type of tuition for TAs to be handling the teaching of the courses or the prof NOT be available for student assistance.<br>
Attending ND is a choice, and one that needs to be made on a personal basis with the understanding of finances. There are plenty of great schools in this country that can offer an affordable education. I would suggest to <em>anyone</em> that they carefully think about this in making decisions to attend college. Does ND cost too much? That probably depends on how much you are willing to pay. Has ND been wasteful in spending? Probably-and I can guarantee you that every college institution in this country is wasteful. Can they justify charging the tuition of $48,850? Probably so; has <em>anyone</em> thought about contacting Fr Jenkins esp if they have an alumni connection? Instead of bashing ND about its high tuition rates, go to the source and complain. Then look around at other colleges in the top 20, like ND, and you will find they charge about the same price. If you are going to consider those schools with that type of tuition, then don't knock ND!</p>
<p>Notre Dame AL-I think Notre Dame's problem with this issue is that its President Fr. Jenkins has been so aggressive in pushing the high cost of Notre Dame as almost a "status symbol". I recall an article, I wish I had the reference, in the NY Times a few years ago, in which the gist was that Jenkins thought that it was important that Notre Dame's tuition be as high as Harvard's in order to attract top students. This coupled with the aggressive publicity by ND promoting the Forbes rating of the Notre Dame football team as the most valuable in College football and pieces profiling the Notre Dame portfolio managers in the Wall Street Journal have , unfortunately, given Notre Dame a pecuniary dimension resulting in a PR problem that other top schools with high tuitions don't have (even if the other schools are every bit as aggressive in running up their portfolios and raising their tuitions, they have not been leading with it in a public way like Notre Dame has).</p>