Purdue, led by former GOP gov, bucks tuition trend: 'We chose not to play the game'

Purdue University has announced that it will continue its tuition freeze through the 2022-2023 school year, marking a decade straight without any tuition increases.

The December 14 announcement assures students that they will continue to pay the same rate in tuition for another year, even as other colleges and universities across the country raise the cost of tuition year after year.

Campus Reform noted a similar announcement from Purdue one year ago. This was the ninth consecutive year of a tuition freeze at the university. But the most recent tuition freeze at Purdue has been described as “unprecedented at Purdue and in higher education during modern times.”

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Purdue University President and former Indiana Republican Governor Mitch Daniels first announced a tuition freeze soon after he became president during the spring 2013 semester. Since tuition has not increased for any student attending the university. 

According to the announcement, “students and their families will have saved more than a billion dollars on educational and living expenses by 2023.”

Due to its affordability, Purdue has seen its largest freshman student body in the history of the school as well as the largest overall student population.

Since Daniels became president, Purdue has been one of the most affordable schools in the Big Ten. By the year 2023, roughly 60,000 students will have graduated from the university without seeing any increase in their tuition rates.

Daniels also spoke about the historic tuition freeze. 

“Purdue is a national leader in the value of its degrees, and we intend to increase that value further,” he stated. “Our story remains the same. As long as we are balancing our operating budget, growing our faculty, and investing in necessary projects, we see no good reason to charge our students more.”

[RELATED: Nebraska lowers tuition costs despite other schools raising theirs]

“Our goal remains for Purdue to deliver higher education at the highest proven value,” Daniels concluded.

Director of Public Information and Management Issues at Purdue University, Tim Doty, spoke to Campus Reform about the tuition freeze at the university.

“It’s all about value,” he stated. “We choose not to play the game other universities do with skyrocketing tuition - we fit our budgets to our families’ wallets, not the other way around. As President Daniels likes to say, it’s part of our mission as a Land Grant university.”

“Affordability is a focus of everything we do, and we look at everything from the largest expenditures to the smallest,” he continued.  “Affordable education increases interest, and people notice when you offer higher education at the highest proven value.”

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