On Monday, Nov. 8, OCU students were notified by the OCU Communications Office that the university will not raise costs of tuition and fees for the 2022-23 school year. The news came after a statement that the university has operated with Covid mitigation processes, and has kept costs flat for two years in spite of pandemic challenges.
In an announcement, OCU President Evans was quoted saying “We want to recognize the collective effort of our students to persevere through the challenges of the pandemic… These have included economic challenges, and we acknowledge those struggles continue for many.”
The announcement made it clear that flat costs will be kept for housing, meals, and tuition rates for undergraduate, master’s, law, and doctoral programs. According to current university website information, the annual block tuition cost for OCU undergraduate students is $28,094. Block tuition covers 12-16 credit hours, and additional hours taken beyond 16 are charged an additional $953 per credit hour. Annual university fees are $4,650.
After subtracting estimated financial aid, the university has set estimated annual costs for tuition and all fees at $20,470. This places the university at a lower annual cost than other universities in the Oklahoma City area, such as Oklahoma Christian, the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma Baptist University, and the University of Tulsa.
Vice President for Enrollment Management Kevin Windholz provided MediaOCU with additional information regarding the decision to keep university costs flat. “To make this decision, we have to evaluate where we stand as compared to our competitors’ costs. To do this we examine the published costs for the current academic year,” Windholz said.
Based on competitors, OCU has maintained a lower overall cost rate as demonstrated by the previous comparisons to other Oklahoma universities. Factors within this comparison are subject to change. Windholz also said that universities will often announce changes to tuition and costs between April and June. “OCU actually makes that decision very early, typically the October before the next August start,” Windholz said.
Windholz also said OCU has not had significant raises in tuition and cost rates over the last decade. “I will say that over a 10 year period OCU has experienced minimal cost increases compared to some competitors. For this reason, the gap between the costs of public universities and a private like OCU has narrowed the past 10 years,” Windholz said.
Maintaining tuition and cost rates comes with no change to university operation and offerings. The decision was made to ease financial burden on students in the face of economic struggles faced during the pandemic, so that education will not become a greater cost.
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