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The university also plans to increase the total budget for financial aid, but it will cut out all but a select few merit-based scholarships in order to increase need-based aid.
Total cost of attendance - including room and board - will be $50,182 next year, with a recommended personal expense cost of $1,000 and $800 for books, NYU spokesman John Beckman said in an e-mail.
NYU is cash poor, drawing 60 percent of its resources from tuition, which based on the announced percentage increase should be about $37,400 next year. As the university has grown and aggressively expanded, tuition has increased dramatically, by 65 percent since 1998.
Sexton's e-mail also said that next year, NYU will give "more than $150 million" in financial aid. The e-mail also noted that the amount of the university's unrestricted funds dedicated to financial aid will increase by 12 percent.
But last year's total financial aid funding - which includes much more than NYU's unrestricted funds - was only $146.9 million; $150 million would actually represent an increase of about 2 percent from last year's total budget.
Financial aid funding has increased 87 percent since 1998, however.
"The question that will have to be asked each year at NYU will have to be: What are our ambitions, and what are our needs?" Sexton said in an interview with WSN Friday.
"In the end, people with full knowledge of what the cost of the education is make a judgment as to the value proposition offered by an NYU education," he added. "And they come here. And they come here freely."
But for many, it isn't so easy.
Former Gallatin freshman Tiffany Thompson, who is now enrolled at Stony Brook University on Long Island, had to drop out of NYU last semester when her Federal Plus Loan was denied because of credit issues.
Thompson couldn't pay full NYU tuition, and the loan "was my main way of paying for school," she said.
Thompson said she sent Sexton an e-mail after she left, explaining why.
"I don't know if he got it or anything," she said.
Sexton's e-mail said the university recognized that "the necessary annual growth in tuition is a challenge for many of those paying it."
The university does plan to save money through bureaucratic reorganization, the e-mail said. He also said that neither the Polytechnic merger nor NYU Abu Dhabi will draw any university funds.
"NYU is far more dependent than many of its peers, so whatever we want to do - increase financial aid, add programs, improve facilities, enhance our academics - over 60 cents of every dollar required will have to come from tuition," Beckman said.
"There is no decision the university takes more seriously than the setting of tuition," he said.
Additional reporting by Eric Platt. Robyn Baitcher is deputy news editor. E-mail her at rbaitcher@nyunews.com.
