Fordham University students and families received an email last Thursday, April 9, from Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer Tokumbo Shobowale, informing them that the cost of attendance at Fordham will be increasing for the fourth year in a row, with tuition increasing by 4.5% and room and board increasing by 3.0%. Students are unhappy, to say the least, and many families are again finding themselves scrambling for a way to pay these higher prices. Additionally, many students and families are finding it difficult to understand exactly where all of this money is going.
To explain this increase, Shobowale cited U.S. inflation rates, saying that “the cost of everything from technology to paper and utilities to food has gone up,” so Fordham must increase their prices in order to account for that. The Consumer Price Index for all items in the U.S. rose 2.7% in 2025.
Frustrations with Fordham are at an all time high following this email, with rumblings of “Is it really worth it to stay?” throughout the student body. However, it is difficult to find another institution comparable to Fordham that isn’t following these same patterns while already sitting at extremely high prices. If students were looking for a private education in New York City, they likely would not find themselves in a much better financial position elsewhere. The cost of attendance at New York University currently sits at $100,998 per year, Columbia University similarly at $96,990 per year and Barnard College at $99,874 per year. For alternative Jesuit universities, the cost of attendance is currently $91,792 at Boston College, $94,312 at Georgetown University and $96,492 at the College of the Holy Cross. This past year, the cost of attendance at Fordham was $93,097, comfortably within the range of these other institutions.
Fordham boasts a massive 96% of first-year students who receive financial aid, totaling $281 million in total aid last year, and $15 million in donor-funded scholarships. However, according to an employee whom The Ram spoke with at Fordham’s Office of Finance, scholarships do not increase as tuition rises, and financial aid increases are only on a case-by-case basis — they do not automatically increase with these changes. This makes it much more difficult for students to adapt to increased university prices with only enough help to cover the cost of attendance for their first year, without factoring in the significant yearly increases to their bill.
While the vast majority of college students receive financial aid, that could mean anything from a full ride to a couple hundred dollars. For some students, that hardly makes a dent in their education costs, leaving them to figure out how to pay tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get their degree. Families who do not qualify for significant financial aid are not necessarily in the economic standing to pay extremely high tuition prices like Fordham’s.
The option to simply not attend college and find a job without it is also rapidly shrinking in validity, as Georgetown University predicts that 72% of jobs in the U.S. will require postsecondary education and/or education by 2031, with 95% of jobs in the “managerial and professional economy” requiring at least some form of postsecondary education. In a study done by Harvard Business School, researchers found that fewer than one in 700 people get hired without a college degree.
Even when students find a way to pay for the rising cost of college, upon graduation, they are being released into the worst entry-level job market since the pandemic, with the underemployment rate rising to 42.5% in 2025. Additionally, economic recession odds on Wall Street are increasing significantly, with some models predicting over double the risk of “normal” times. Figuring out how to pay off student loans and debts from university years without a steady full-time job in the current economy is a near-impossible task, which can leave students in economic ruin without much to show for it.
With much of the country in economic distress, asking students and families to pay prices nearing and sometimes even reaching six figures for a necessary education (especially when they are already deep into their studies) is unethical. While yes, the cost of everything is increasing and this tuition increase is not unique to Fordham, that doesn’t make it any more attainable for students to pay. If prices are going to sit at this obscene height, these institutions need to be far more transparent about where they are directing their funds. College students across the country should be able to get a quality education without setting themselves up for a lifetime of financial stress, especially when there’s no guarantee of a return on their investment in the job market.