As the price tag to attend college continues to skyrocket across the country, Grand Canyon University is freezing tuition costs on its Phoenix campus for the 16th straight year.
The private Christian university’s ground campus tuition in 2024-25 will remain at $16,500 before institutional scholarships are included. Because more than 90% of GCU’s traditional students qualify for institutional scholarships that totaled $180 million in 2023, that brings the average tuition cost in 2023-24 to approximately $9,200, which is comparable to public universities and well below other private schools. That total does not include federal aid such as Pell grants and subsidized student loans or external scholarships that lower students’ out-of-pocket expenses further. In addition to tuition, GCU students pay an average of roughly $1,150 annually in fees, excluding book access fees, which is often much less than other universities.
According to data from the College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid Report,” since 2008-09 when GCU began its tuition freeze, the average cost for in-state tuition and fees at four-year public colleges has risen 71% to $11,260, while it has risen 65% to $41,540 at four-year private institutions.
“Education is a critical component that can create equality of opportunity for all socioeconomic classes and promote upward social mobility in society,” said GCU President Brian Mueller. “That should be a significant objective for all universities. Freezing tuition costs is one way that we ensure higher education is affordable to all socioeconomic classes. That increases diversity on college campuses (over 40% of GCU’s enrollment is students of color), makes higher education more accessible to first-generation college students and helps prevent students from taking on large amounts of debt.”
GCU’s housing costs are also well below the national average. The average cost for room and board at a four-year public college rose to $12,770 in 2023-24 and to $14,650 at a four-year private institution, according to the College Board. GCU’s average room and board cost is just $9,910 even though nearly all of the modern residence halls have been built in the past 12 years and roughly 64% of the university’s beds are single-occupancy, apartment-style living.
Since 2009, enrollment on GCU’s campus has grown from less than 1,000 traditional students to more than 25,000 while the physical campus has tripled in size to 300 acres. The university has invested more than $1.7 billion in academic infrastructure that includes new degree programs, classrooms, laboratories, research spaces, residence halls and technologies throughout its 10 colleges.
“We have been truly blessed with the remarkable transformation that has occurred on our campus,” Mueller said. “What’s even more amazing is that we have been able to accomplish that without passing those costs on to our students through tuition increases on the ground campus and without the state tax subsidies that traditional public universities receive.”
