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2022-2023 Tuition Increase

Frequently Asked Questions

2022-2023 Tuition Increase

The University of Oklahoma is raising tuition and mandatory fees 3% for out-of-state (non-resident) undergraduate and graduate students in OU Norman campus programs, including out-of-state students in the College of Law. This increase will not affect in-state (resident) students or Health Sciences Center programs.
 

Estimated Average Increase to Students

UNDERGRADUATES

 

Est. Increase: Full Academic Year

Est. Increase: By Semester

Residents

$0

$0

Non-Residents

$763

$382

GRADUATE STUDENTS

 

Est. Increase: Full Academic Year

Est. Increase: By Semester

Residents

$0

$0

Non-Residents

$724

$362

The new rates will be effective for the Fall 2022 semester.

As a public university, the University of Oklahoma places a strong emphasis on balancing academic excellence with affordability and access. The increase, which will generate approximately $3 million, will significantly help support OU’s Strategic Plan, specifically areas that will enhance the student experience.

Raising tuition is never an easy decision. Factors that influenced this decision include the inflation rate skyrocketing to a 40-year high of over 8%, coupled with its effect on OU’s ability to maintain competitive compensation for faculty and staff, which lies at the core of the excellence we owe to our students.

Aggressive cost-cutting efforts allowed OU to hold tuition flat for three consecutive years (FY19, FY20, and FY21) while funding strategic priorities. Over this period, the average annual net tuition charged to an entering freshmen declined, as tuition discounting increased. For residents, their annual net tuition cost declined $710 since Fall 2016, while for non-residents it only increased $152, or 0.25%, per year.

Although the State Legislature has done much to invest in specific higher education initiatives, particularly related to research, appropriations to OU have fallen dramatically over the years. In the mid-80s, state funding made up about 42% of OU’s operating budget. Today, it only makes up roughly 10%.

This year’s increase will significantly help support the OU Strategic Plan, specifically areas that will enhance the student experience. Funds generated from the rate increase are expressly earmarked toward:

Improvements to Academics

  • Hiring more top-tier faculty, which will enhance the classroom experience and research enterprise, ultimately helping OU achieve AAU-caliber results.

  •  Investing in academic advising positions to help students on their path to graduation.

Enhanced Student Growth and Experience Opportunities

  • Hiring additional Career Services staff to provide best-in-class student support and job placement focus.

  • Targeting funding to departments for increased graduate assistant support.

  • Creating the Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity to identify and fund student research and creative activity efforts during the summer.

Improvements to the Campus Experience

  • Supporting an across-the-board salary increase for eligible faculty and staff for FY23. In the last 10 years, there have only been three such salary increases for staff and four for faculty. Moving forward, salary increases will be performance-based and will need to be supported through tuition and fees.

As part of the Strategic Plan, we will continue to expand our student services, launch new academic programs, fund innovative research, invest in hiring new faculty, and more. Most of these investments are long overdue, but are ones that we believe will sustain OU’s excellence for generations.

OU realizes that this increase has a real impact on students and families. The university’s plan to substantially increase the availability of need-based aid so that students who have the ability to succeed and excel also have the opportunity is OU’s No. 1 fundraising priority.

  • In FY22, $32.7 million in total scholarships was awarded to students – 57% of which was given to students who demonstrated financial need. This is $3.1 million more than was provided in FY21.

  • In the last five years, need-based aid has grown more than 48% (institutional aid, external awards, and tuition waivers combined).

  • OU will also continue Crimson Commitment, which began in 2018 and provides qualified students with up to $8,300 in scholarships to cover annual fees and 100% of tuition, up from $8,000 in annual assistance last year.

  • Since being introduced in 2020, Welcome Home Scholarships – which cover half the cost of housing for students with financial need – have provided $5.13 million in aid. 

  • In the last five years, the tuition discount rates provided to resident freshmen has risen 22 percentage points, from 36% in FY18 to 58% in FY22.

  • This increase in tuition discounting for residents has enabled the university to improve recruitment and retention, helping OU’s 6-year graduation rate reach 75.7% – an all-time high for OU.

In addition, for the 2022-2023 academic year, the university developed a multi-phase Tuition and Fee Simplification initiative that resulted in the consolidated of nearly 700 fees. Benefits of this process include:

  • Easier to read Bursar bill
  • Updated and easier to understand fee descriptions and purposes
  • Updated explanations to improve line of sight into how fee dollars are spent

We always want to guarantee that our operations are efficient and that we are not wasteful in our spending. That’s why over the last four years, OU identified and saved approximately $60 million on a recurring basis from our Norman campus operating budget. These aggressive cost-cutting efforts allowed OU to hold tuition flat for FY19, FY20, and FY21 and fund strategic priorities, such as additional faculty hiring in Fall 2018. Full-time staff at OU have declined from 4,007 in Fall 2016 to 3,540 in Fall 2021, as we seek to support students and faculty in an efficient and effective manner and prioritize spend in areas such as faculty and need-based aid.

Compared to peer tuition rates, this new rate would bring OU to:

  • 73% for resident undergraduates
  • 75% for non-resident undergraduates
  • 77% for resident graduate students
  • 93% for non-resident graduate students

OU students consistently graduate with less debt than students at most other Big XII schools. 54% of all undergraduates from OU graduate debt-free (PDF)* compared to 42% at four-year public universities nationwide.

*This percentage is for undergraduates who started at OU as first-time students and graduated between 7/1/20 and 6/30/21, which is the standard measure for this data point.

Over the past five years, including our proposed FY23 tuition plan, OU has only increased resident tuition once, leading to an average 0.5% increase in tuition and mandatory fees per year for residents. Using State Regents peer data, the increase at peer institutions was 4.3% per year, over 8.5 times higher than OU. The cumulative impact from inflation since FY10 now exceeds the cumulative rate increases to resident tuition.

For several years, OU has been making progress toward increasing support for graduate education. In 2018, OU launched a multi-year initiative to lower fees for graduate assistants (GAs). Over the past four years, tuition and mandatory fee costs for GAs declined, and cuts to grad student fees resulted in annual savings over $2,000 compared to FY18.

OU will not able to reduce fees for the 2022-2023 academic year in the same manner, as the source used to fund these fee cuts was fully utilized to achieve the $2,000/year savings.

We understand this decision has real impacts; that’s why over the last seven months, a core team of OU administrators engaged student leaders in extensive conversation, holding regular meetings to better understand the effects of a tuition and fee increase on students.

Our professionals in the Student Financial Center stand ready to help as you seek financial aid and create a plan to fund the upcoming year.

Eligible students are reminded and encouraged to take full advantage of Crimson Commitment.

In Fall 2022, OU is expanding the Crimson Commitment program to incoming Oklahoma’s Promise transfer students who are members of Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society or participants of the Ticket to Rose program at Rose State College.

More Information

As always, we endeavor to be conscientious stewards of our resources and our sacred purpose of changing lives. For any questions or concerns regarding funding a tuition increase, please contact the Student Financial Center.