Tuition rises slightly but still a bargain

Tuition
rises slightly but still a bargain
…………………………………………………………………

Fall 2002 tuition
at Rice University will range from $16,550 for seniors to
$17,550 for freshmen, based on the university’s exceptional
guarantee that returning-student tuition will rise no more
than the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The new rates
were approved by the Rice Board of Trustees.

The average
tuition of most other top private universities is nearly
60 percent higher than Rice’s, both because of Rice’s
indexing policy and because the university uses its endowment
— the fifth largest per student among American universities
— to keep tuition lower.

To help students
and families plan for the entire college education, Rice
has guaranteed since 1994 that tuition for returning students
will not increase by more than the previous year’s
CPI. Based on last year’s 1.6 percent rise in CPI,
tuition rates for returning students will be:

• $16,850
for students who entered in 2001;
• $16,750 for students who entered in 2000;
• $16,550 for students who entered in 1999.

Room-and-board
rates for academic year 2002-03 will be $7,480.

Tuition for
Rice graduate students will be $18,500. For M.B.A. students
at Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management,
tuition will be $23,250.

Rice also seeks
to keep high-quality education affordable by:

• Admitting
students without regard to financial need and then meeting
100 percent of the demonstrated need of students enrolled.
• Giving nearly $15 million in financial or merit aid
from its own budget. Including outside sources, more than
80 percent of all undergraduates receive some form of financial
aid.
• Capping the amount of borrowing students are expected
to do as part of their financial self-help. The policy ensures
that students can graduate with no more than $9,900 in financial-aid
debt, a figure lower than that at all but one or two private
universities and all but a half-dozen public universities.
In fact, about 60 percent of Rice students graduate with
no student loans.