Board of Trustees Approves 2025-2026 Operating Budget Including Tuition and Fees

Dear Parents and Students,

The Loyola University Chicago Board of Trustees has approved the new operating budget for academic year 2025-2026. The budget sets the University’s full-time undergraduate tuition at $54,530, a 4.4 percent increase from the current year. Mandatory fees and tuition for most graduate programs will also increase by 4.4 percent. Rates for residence halls will vary with an average increase of 3.5 percent. Meal plans will increase between 4 and 4.4 percent. The complete schedule of tuition, fee, and room and board rates can be found at: www.LUC.edu/bursar/tuitionfees

While the Board of Trustees and University leadership recognize that any tuition increase strains family resources, we have continued to honor our ongoing goal to hold any annual increase to no more than 1.5 percent of the average increase from the past 10 years. Additionally, the new budget provides an additional $19 million of university-funded financial aid to assist our students. This record amount of $322.8 million represents a 22.6 percent increase in student financial assistance over the past three years. Moreover, we continue to support a student aid emergency pool available to families whose financial circumstances have substantially changed and jeopardize the ability of a student to persist and graduate from Loyola.

Loyola’s top priority is to support student success inside and outside the classroom and we remain committed to careful stewardship of your tuition dollars. Rising costs to attract and retain top-notch faculty and staff remains our single largest operating expense. At the same time, we remain focused on keeping non-student facing operating expenses contained while making moves that assure our continued financial strength. For example:

• We have worked diligently to keep faculty and staff compensation competitive, an especially challenging task in the past few years of higher-than-normal inflation;
• We have continued to plan for and extinguish debt while refinancing when appropriate for better interest rates. The University has cut its interest expense on debt in half in just the past 7 years;
• Loyola has strategically prioritized growing the endowment to increase our ability to provide scholarship support and student financial aid. The growth of our endowment over the last 5 years has allowed us to double the endowment draw which contributes directly to scholarships and financial aid packages provided to students;
• We are embarking on a multi-year plan to improve our university-wide technology platform to better serve students, streamline operating functions, and improve efficiency;
• Our recently completed Campus Plan requires us to begin necessary investments in new academic and student support buildings at the Lake Shore Campus that will be announced in the coming months.

Our budget planning process requires a balanced, forward-looking approach to maintain and strengthen our academic core while remaining competitive in program and campus plant to attract and retain the very best and brightest students across all levels.

I am confident that the investment your family has made in Loyola University Chicago will pay dividends for your student for decades to come. As an alum of Loyola myself, and as a 44-year member of our staff and faculty, I am convinced our university has never been stronger and the outlook brighter.

On behalf of the University’s Board of Trustees, President, faculty, and staff, thank you for your confidence in us. I would personally welcome any questions or feedback from you. My direct email address is: wmagdzi@LUC.edu.

Sincerely,

Wayne Magdziarz (BA ‘82, MBA ’87)

Sr. Vice President and Chief Financial Officer