Alumni Pledge for Dental Scholarships

Raising $10 million for scholarships for U-M dental students is one of the major priorities of the School's efforts to raise $35 million during the Michigan Difference fundraising campaign.

As the chart below illustrates, costs of tuition, fees, instruments, materials, books, and supplies now surpasses $26,400 annually for in-state students and exceeds $41,300 for out-of-state students. Those figures are about double what they were for the 1995-1996 academic year.

In the past, financial aid packages typically consisted of 70 percent grants and scholarships. The remaining 30 percent were loans.

Today, those figures are reversed and students continue to graduate from dental school with staggering debt loads.

The average debt load for graduates from the Class of 2006 was more than $143,200, according to Dr. Marilyn Woolfolk, assistant dean for student services.