Transforming the Student Experience

Great universities prove support and infrastructure that help students to focus on academic success, earning a degree, and becoming engaged alumni. Today’s Rutgers students enjoy new personalized learning environments and improved academic and administrative services. New financial aid programs and an institutional determination to minimize tuition increases are keeping Rutgers affordable for New Jersey families. In New Brunswick, Rutgers is reducing travel time and easing congestion on University buses.

Outstanding Honors Colleges

The New Brunswick Honors College attracts some of the highest-achieving high school graduates from New Jersey and across the nation. These students likely would have enrolled in universities outside New Jersey without the draw of a prestigious opportunity.

• 500-bed residential and academic facility opened in 2015
• Average incoming student: SAT score above 1500, GPA above 4.0
• First-year students live and learn alongside faculty fellows

The Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC) at Rutgers University–Newark is revolutionizing the concept of an honors college. The HLLC identifies the homegrown knowledge of talented students, relying on measure like SAT scores but also on a holistic assessment of talents and characteristics associated with a student’s ability to thrive in college and contribute to the greater good.

• Students receive a residential scholarship and engage in internships, research assistantships, and service opportunities.
• 400-bed residential and academic facility opened in fall 2019
• Prudential Financial established a $10 million scholarship program for Newark residents enrolling in HLLC—the largest gift ever at Rutgers–Newark

The Honors College at Rutgers University–Camden, more than 20 years old, has expanded to include not only first-year students but also transfer and rising sophomores, resulting in a record enrollment of more than 500 students. 

• An engagement requirement every semester
• Students pursue academic “commitments”—second majors, minors, and departmental honors—or undertake academic “enhancements,” such as undergraduate research, internships, and the UN Summer Study Program
• Offers subsidies for participation in a short-term learning abroad program

Access and Opportunity

The University is keeping a Rutgers degree affordable for New Jersey families. Tuition increases were held to an average of 2.37 percent from 2013 to 2019, which compares with a 3.9 percent average annual increase over the previous five years.

New financial assistance programs at Rutgers University–Newark (RU-N to the Top) and Rutgers University–Camden (Bridging the Gap) guarantee that students whose family income is $60,000 or less will have their tuitions fully covered. Both have shown strong results.

At Rutgers–Camden

• First-year enrollment moved from 500 in 2013 to 1,000 in 2018
• Two-thirds of incoming undergraduates in 2018 were African-American or Hispanic

At Rutgers–Newark

• First-year enrollment grew from 1,050 in 2013 to 1,300 in 2018
• The enrollment of Newark residents increased by 59 percent in those years

Rutgers University–New Brunswick is a model of access among Big Ten public universities, with the largest percentage of federal Pell grant recipients and the smallest gap in graduation rates between Pell and non-Pell students.

Making it Easier to Be a Student

Rutgers has sought to improve the way students interact with university offices for enrollment, financial aid, student accounting, and registration.

• A new financial aid website and a check-in app in the financial aid office enable students to conduct most business online and reduce wait times for in-person support.
• One-stop service centers have been proposed for each campus, and one—at Rutgers–Camden—opened in 2018. In New Brunswick, staff from the offices of the registrar, financial aid, and student accounting are now co-located at Records Hall. 
• The myRutgers dashboard allows self-service activities from computers and mobile devices for courses and registration, grades, financial aid, and more. The dashboard received 6 million hits in its first ten months, with 98 percent of students using it.
• A new, computer-based course scheduling system—the first major change to the system in decades—will go live in scheduling courses for fall 2020. By optimizing course locations and scheduling, it will reduce time to graduation, facilitate the satisfaction of major requirements, and reduce the time spent on university buses.
• A task force developed strategies for relieving the congested bus system and travel times between classes at Rutgers–New Brunswick. Rutgers has added 18 buses to the fleet, installed a tracking system to help students know when the next bus will arrive at the nearest stop, and used classroom locations to help determine first-year housing placements.

Technology-enabled Learning

Technology is increasingly integral to academic life, and the University has made efforts to ensure that technology is helping students navigate their Rutgers careers.

Active Learning: Rutgers–New Brunswick has developed active learning spaces in eight classrooms and lecture halls in Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering, the new Rutgers Academic Building, Tillett Hall, and the Chemistry and Chemical Biology building. These spaces employ whiteboards, student and faculty technology, and room architecture to foster student engagement and collaboration. For example, the instructor and students can project images from their laptop, phone, or tablet to screens that can be viewed by the entire class.

Telepresence Classrooms:  Introduced in 2017, telepresence technology makes it possible for one professor to teach a course in two separate classrooms—one on the Busch Campus, the other on Douglass Campus—with students choosing the location most convenient to them (and avoiding bus travel). The classrooms' "immersive" video technology makes it feel as if they’re all in the same room. 

A similar technology is employed by Rutgers Law, enabling simultaneous courses to be offered in Camden and Newark and increasing the number of courses available to law students in both locations.

Student Spaces

Rutgers has completed or planned important construction projects to enhance student life across the University, including:

• Sojourner Truth Student Apartments in New Brunswick
• Renovated 1920s high-rise building at 15 Washington Street in Newark
• Kathleen W. Ludwig Global Village Living Learning Center in New Brunswick
• Express Newark in the former Hahne’s & Co. department store in Newark
• New fields for intercollegiate and intramural sports in Camden
• New Brunswick Performing Arts Center