University announces tuition reset program

Today, University of Detroit Mercy made an important announcement designed to increase enrollment and we wanted our alumni to be among the first to know.

The University will reset full-time undergraduate tuition from $41,158 to $28,000 effective in fall of 2018 through the Assure Your Boundless Future Tuition Reset. This reset provides students and parents a more precise and real cost to attend Detroit Mercy. The idea is that by reducing the published cost of tuition, Detroit Mercy puts itself in a stronger position to attract more academically talented students and their families who may have been deterred by the published tuition cost and therefore never seriously considered the University as a possibility.

For many prospective students and their families, the cost of attending a private university with the academic excellence and tradition of producing leaders like Detroit Mercy has grown more daunting each year. Many families find it a challenge to understand the real cost they will pay due to high sticker prices and the impact scholarships and financial aid have on that cost.

Some important things to understand about this initiative:

• The tuition reset reduces the gap between our published price and what students and families will actually pay once scholarships and awards are applied. It makes Detroit Mercy a more realistic possibility for students and prevents families from being deterred by a high published price.
• Our academic excellence remains the same. Detroit Mercy has always offered a high-quality education. Maintaining that strength while reducing our tuition will improve our value. Because of this, our standards for admission remain unchanged.
• Detroit Mercy has been purposefully positioning itself to rely on core operating revenues from tuition and auxiliary services. This new tuition model is based on lowering both the published price and the discount. That means most students’ net price — and therefore the University’s net revenue per student — is largely unchanged.

Detroit Mercy is enacting this reset from a position of strength and new, positive developments:

• Three years of new student enrollment increases.
• Rising national rankings.
• Increases in retention.
• An endowment that has doubled since 2011.
• Several federal and private grants to support first generation students and academic success, STEM programs and local secondary students.
• Significant commitment and increased activity in neighborhood enhancement efforts through the Live6 Alliance and service-learning projects.
• A comprehensive $100-million campaign that has raised more than $78 million thus far, a significant proportion of which will support endowed scholarships for students.
• New and renovated facilities that accommodate more enrollment growth.

We hope you find this initiative as exciting as we do, but you may still have questions. To find more information about the tuition reset, click here. To catch up on alumni news, read our alumni blog at sites.udmercy.edu/alumni. To connect with other alumni, check out our Forever Titans alumni website.