Marquette University announced Jan. 23 that they will be raising undergraduate tuition 4% and housing and food rates by 3%. They will also be adding a fee of $210 per semester for student health and mental health services.
The Board of Trustees approved a smaller increase to undergraduate tuition than last year’s 5%, but the number still follows the trend of the around $2,000 annual increase for the past three academic years.
2023-24: $47,690
2024-25: $50,070
2025-26: $52,070
“Our goal is to make a Marquette education accessible,” The announcement on Marquette Today said. “Even as we face the same economic pressures that so many other organizations are experiencing.”
The price of tuition came up at a UAS meeting about possible increases to teaching workloads for faculty in accordance with the Marquette 2031: Securing Our Future plan, which aims to reduce the university’s spending by $31 million and reinvest 40% back into the university.
Although the Board of Trustees approved the tuition increase, University President Kimo Ah Yun said at the November UAS meeting that he did not want to make increases to tuition.
“We want to make sure students can come here,” Ah Yun said. “It’s one of the many things I look at and ask, ‘How are we ensuring that we’re keeping a price point that’s appropriate for a student?’…We know we have an important strategic plan, we know we have to invest in the strategic plan. We’re not going to do that on the backs of students, so what will we do differently as a university?”
The Wire reached out to the university to see if Ah Yun wanted to include a statement about the increase and his prior comments about keeping tuition affordable. Marquette responded with the following statement:
“As the costs of many goods and utilities rise year-over-year, the cost of providing a truly transformational education rises, as well,” Kevin Conway, university spokesperson, said in a statement. “It is because of this that the Marquette community has worked to identify new cost-savings and revenue-generation opportunities in order to keep a Marquette education accessible, even as we face the same economic pressures that so many other organizations are experiencing. This work led the Marquette University Board of Trustees to approve a smaller tuition and housing and food increases than last year.”
At the University of Loyola Chicago, a Jesuit school similar to Marquette’s size, they have vowed not to increase tuition more than 1.5% from year to year for the past 10 years. However, another Jesuit institution, Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, increased their tuition by 2.7% for the 2025-26 academic year.
This story was written by Sophia Tiedge. She can be reached at [email protected].
