Schools Standardize Graduate Tuition for Ph.D. Programs
To adapt to the changes in interdisciplinary Ph.D. education, both Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania are standardizing their graduate-level tuition rates
across the schools’ individual colleges, according to an article in Inside Higher Ed (“Shifts in Ph.D. Tuition Policy,” May 7,
2008).
Cornell, which operates several state-funded and privately endowed colleges, is changing its tuition policies to be
more competitive price-wise with its public university peers.
“Our tuition is just very, very high compared to a lot of the competitor schools,” said Alison Power, dean of the
graduate school at Cornell.
Graduate tuition for Cornell’s privately endowed colleges will be reduced by 10.1 percent, or from $32,800 to
$29,500, and tuition for the state-supported schools will be frozen at $20,800.
The University of Pennsylvania will standardize tuition for its Ph.D. candidates by leveling it to $24,000 a year
for the first five years of the program and then reducing it to $3,000 for subsequent years. The university’s
doctoral tuition fees are currently calculated on a course-by-course basis.
Moving from a per–course tuition system to a flat–rate tuition system for the school’s Ph.D. students will not only
encourage cross-college collaborations, but will also enable professors to better balance the particulars of their
programs, Andrew Binns, the university’s associate provost for education, told Inside Higher Ed.
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