Undergraduate tuition and fees pass $60,000

The cost for a Penn undergraduate education will cross the $60,000 mark for the first time in the 2014-2015 academic school year.

The University announced at Thursday’s Board of Trustees’ winter meeting that tuition and fees will increase by 3.9 percent to $61,132 from $58,812 for the next academic year. This marks the fifth year in a row that the University has raised the cost of a Penn education by 3.9 percent.

The $61,132 figure includes tuition, fees and room and board. Undergraduate tuition will increase from $40,594 to $42,176, room and board will increase from $12,922 to $13,464, additional fees will increase to $5,492 from $5,296, the University announced.

The University also authorized a $196 million financial aid budget for 2014-2015, the largest financial-aid allocation in the University’s history. Since President Amy Gutmann’s term began in 2004, Penn’s financial aid budget has grown by 148 percent.

“One of Penn’s highest evergreen priorities has been to eliminate all financial barriers for young women and men with exceptional promise who attend the University of Pennsylvania,” Gutmann said.

The University will also continue its all-grant, no-loan financial aid policy. The average grants for undergraduate students eligible for financial aid will be about $41,700 in the upcoming academic year.

When compared with cost of attendance around the Ivies, Penn’s tuition announcement places the University somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

While Penn is just crossing the $60,000 mark in tuition and fees, the cost of attendance at Harvard, Columbia, Cornell and Dartmouth universities have already exceeded that. These schools have not yet released their budgets for the 2014-2015 academic year.

Princeton University announced on Jan. 27 that its tuition and fees would increase by 4.1 percent to $55,400 in the upcoming year. Brown University increased its tuition and fees by 4 percent to $57,232 earlier this month in its budget for the 2014 fiscal year.

Correction: This article was edited, due to a typo, to reflect that the University authorized a $196 million financial aid budget for 2014-2015, not a $196 billion financial aid budget

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