Stanford’s Board of Trustees approved a tuition increase and discussed developments in online education at its Feb. 12 meeting.
For the 2013-2014 academic year, tuition will increase 3.5 percent for all undergraduate and most graduate students, including law and medical students. First-year students at the Graduate School of Business will see a 3.9 percent increase.
The overall cost of attending Stanford as an undergraduate will total $56,411 next year, which does not include personal expenses or the cost of books and supplies. First-year MBA students will pay $59,534 in cumulative costs, while graduate engineering students will pay $45,480, and general graduate students will pay $42,690.
According to Steven Denning MBA ’78, chair of the Board of Trustees, financial aid increased at the same rate as tuition, with $130 million allocated in need-based aid this year. Denning said that the current net tuition after financial aid is equivalent to the tuition in 1994 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
“I think that’s a pretty clear indication of Stanford’s commitment to hold down what appears to be an ever-increasing number,” Denning said.
Trustees also approved several building projects, most of which Denning said were “small projects that are less critical.”
According to Denning, the two most notable projects were a partial construction approval and budget increase for the McMurtry Building and the approval of $100 million in capital for Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI) projects.
Trustees discussed online education for the majority of the meeting, with presentations from the School of Education, the School of Medicine, the School of Engineering and the Graduate School of Business.
“When one says online education, it represents a wide array of activity from things going on here on campus to the so-called MOOCs [massive open online courses],” Denning said. “The attempt was to give the board a broader and richer understanding of what one means when [one says] online education.”
Denning said that the trustees will discuss longer-term issues at their next meeting.