Trustees approve 2026 budget, frozen base tuition for main campus and no increase for Indiana residents at Purdue Northwest and Purdue Fort Wayne for 2025-26, 2026-27

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — With a focus on student affordability, structural operating surplus and strategic investments, Purdue University trustees on Friday (June 6) adopted the university’s operating budget for fiscal year 2026, with revenues modestly exceeding expenditures despite the challenges of the macro conditions in higher education.

Tuition and mandatory fees will remain frozen for all undergraduate students at Purdue’s main campus (Indianapolis and West Lafayette) for the 13th and 14th consecutive years, in particular keeping base undergraduate tuition and fees for Indiana residents under $10,000 per year.

Optional fees are also routinely reviewed. For 2025-26, international student fees will increase by $500 per semester for undergraduate and professional master’s students and by $45 for graduate students not enrolled in a professional master’s program. In 2026-27, for undergraduate nonresident and international students enrolling for the first time in fall 2026 or after, there will be a $1,000 per-semester increase to the engineering, computer science/data science/artificial intelligence and Mitch Daniels School of Business differential fees. Indiana residents, graduate students and all students enrolled prior to fall 2026 will not be impacted by this change. As in previous revisions of optional fees, these fee changes will be used to offset increased costs in programs that require specialized technology, equipment and facilities or have unique professional accreditation requirements that are changing. Differential fees have long been present and are routinely updated as needed.

As to the regional universities: Tuition and mandatory fees at Purdue Northwest and Purdue Fort Wayne will remain unchanged for Indiana residents for each year of the biennium — consistent with the recommendation from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education — with a 3% per-year increase for nonresident and international students. The increases for the regional campuses will be used to fund the operating budget, including faculty and staff salaries and benefits, scholarships, supplies, services, and repair and rehabilitation.

Systemwide revenues are budgeted at $3.322 billion — a 1.7% increase compared with fiscal year 2025, driven by growth in auxiliary revenues (student housing and dining and athletics) and investment income. Revenues are expected to exceed expenditures. This positive financial position allows for continued investment in main campus strategic priorities, including:

• Compensation — 2% merit increases
• Mitch Daniels School of Business
• Purdue University in Indianapolis new programs and facilities
• Moveable Dream Hires program
• Online and professional MS programs
• Purdue’s Next Moves
• Purdue Computes
• One Health

Trustees endorsed the following total operating expenditures for fiscal year 2026:

• Main campus: $2.928 billion
• Purdue Fort Wayne: $164 million
• Purdue Northwest: $160 million

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 14 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.