The university cited costs such as salaries, medical coverage, taxes and more for the increase.

The New School is raising tuition for all undergraduate and most graduate degree programs during the 2022-2023 academic year by 3.8%, the university announced in an email to the community March 21.

For full-time tuition per semester, Parsons School of Design will cost $26,854. Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, the College of Performing Arts and the dual-degree BA/BFA program will each cost $25,950.

“I think the email was really weird because it was kind of buried with a ton of other information,” William Jones, a first-year fashion design student at Parsons, said. “I feel like that’s kind of something that needs to be a little bit more public and known.” 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the increase in tuition for the 2022-2023 school year is 0.9% more than the increase for the 2021-2022 school year, which was 2.9%. 

The 3.8% raise in tuition is in line with past increases of tuition at the university that occurred for a number of years before the pandemic. From 2006-2016, tuition grew by 3.6%, 3.7% and 4.36% annually at Parsons, Lang and CoPA, respectively, The New School Free Press reported in 2018.

“It seems super silly to me that the mask policy obviously needs to be there, but they can’t acknowledge that the pandemic has seriously affected so many people financially,” Viv Suhanovsky, a second-year at Lang, said. “It’s a little bit degrading.” 

A tuition and fees FAQ document linked within the email lists costs that the university claims are driving up the prices: salaries and employee benefits, medical coverage for faculty and staff, rent and real estate taxes, contractual costs, financial aid and health and safety measures.

In addition to the increase in tuition, beginning next semester, The New School will revert the financial aid threshold back to the pre-pandemic amount of $500. This means that, starting in the fall, students will receive a hold on their account if their past-due balance of tuition and fees exceeds $500, and therefore will not be able to register for classes for the following semester.

“Even the fact that we’re still wearing masks in school shows that the school is still acknowledging that the pandemic is ongoing,” Jones said. “Yet when it comes to money and the financial situation, they’re kind of saying that it’s done and over with.”

Correction: The financial aid threshold for the upcoming semester will revert to $500. A previous version of the article incorrectly stated the cost as $2000.

A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2022 International Issue of The New School Free Press. Read more stories from the print issue here.