Grand Canyon University freezes tuition for 13th straight year

PHOENIX — For the 13th year in a row, Grand Canyon University announced it will freeze tuition.

The cost for on-campus students will remain at $16,500 for the 2021-22 school year.

However, because a majority of students are offered scholarships by the private university, the average cost of tuition comes down to approximately $8,900, the institution says.

Students pay an average of $900 in additional fees, according to the school.

“We have a number of different initiatives that address diversity both on our campus and in our community,” GCU President Brian Mueller said in a press release, “but the single biggest differentiator has been our ability to make private Christian education affordable to all socioeconomic classes of Americans.

“That creates equality of opportunity for everyone.”

GCU is also working to keep room and board costs low at $8,128. The university says roughly 50% of its rooms are single occupancy in apartment-style living.

The average annual tuition, including room and board, for attending a private nonprofit four-year college is $37,650, according to data from College Board.

The school welcomed its largest ever freshman class of 8,200 students this past fall, bringing campus enrollment to approximately 23,000.

More than 85,000 mostly working adult students are attending GCU’s online campus, the university says.

In 2008, GCU had 1,000 students learning on campus and 12,000 enrolled online.

“We feel very blessed that we have been able to invest nearly $1.5 billion into our campus infrastructure in the last 12 years to keep up with the growth of the university,” Mueller said. “We have been able to do that by using our cash reserves without passing those costs on to students through increases in tuition.”