Texas Christian University

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School Location

2800 S University Dr
Fort Worth, TX 76129

General information

(817) 257-7000

Type of institution:	Private not-for-profit, 4-year or above
Federal Aid:	Institution has a Program Participation Agreement with the US Department of Education for eligible students to receive Pell Grants and other federal aid.
Degrees offered:	Certificates/Less-than-1-year Certificates, Certificates/Less-than-4-year Certificates, Bachelor degrees, Masters degrees, Doctor's degrees
Carnegie classification:	Doctoral/Research Universities
Number of students:	8,668 (2007)
2009-2008 Undergraduate application fee:	$ 40

Mission

To educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community.

About this School

Texas Christian University (TCU) is a private, coeducational university located in Fort Worth, Texas. TCU is affiliated with, but not governed by, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Its mascot is the "horned frog". Its school colors are purple and white.

History

East Texas brothers Addison and Randolph Clark, together with their father Joseph A. Clark, founded what was then called the AddRan Male & Female College in 1873 after the brothers had returned from service in the War Between the States. AddRan, a contraction of the brothers' names, had been the name of Addison Clark's first child, a boy who died of diphtheria in 1872 at the age of three and is buried in Pioneers Rest Cemetery in Fort Worth. The name is now preserved in TCU's college of humanities and social sciences. The Clarks were scholar-preacher/teachers who were products of the Campbellite movement, one of the streams of the Restorationist movement in the nineteenth-century American church. The Campbellites were the spiritual ancestors of the modern Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, and the non-instrumental Churches of Christ. Campbellites were also major proponents of education, and the Clarks operated a preparatory school, the Male & Female Seminary of Fort Worth, from 1869 to 1874. But they also envisioned an institution of higher learning for both men and women that would be Christian in character, but nonsectarian in spirit. They planned to establish their college in Fort Worth on five city blocks purchased for that purpose in 1869. However, from 1867-1872, the character of Fort Worth changed substantially due to the commercial influence of the Chisholm Trail, the principal route for moving Texas cattle to the Kansas railheads. A huge influx of cattle, men, and money transformed the sleepy frontier village into a booming, brawling cowtown. Randolph Clark described Fort Worth in those days as follows: "The longhorns roamed over the hills and valleys by the thousands. ...Ft. Worth was a supply station; here the 'grub-wagon' was replenished for the long drive to the Red River and through the Indian Territory to Kansas. Here the buyers from the North met the cattlemen from the range. Prospecters and adventurers, the genuine cowboys in charge of the herds and the noisy imitation, the tough vagabond and the professional gambler... seemed ever present. Money circulated freely. There was no law against carrying deadly weapons. Business was transacted in the open, and each man carried his burglar insurance. ...The quiet prairie town was deluged with a flood of humanity. Boys, young men, and family men were caught up in this whirlpool of licentiousness and greed. It came to be a saying that one trip over the trail with a herd to Kansas would ruin the ordinary boy, and that the boy who was strong enough to stand two trips was forever safe, but he would show the scars." (Randolph Clark, Reminiscences Biographical and Historical, 1919.) The area around the property purchased by the Clarks for their college soon became the town's vice district, an unrelieved stretch of saloons, dance halls, gambling parlors, and bordellos catering to the bawdy appetites of cowboys and gamblers. It soon acquired a nickname that stuck: "Hell's Half Acre." The Clarks feared their students would be "dazzled by this glitter of vice and caught like insects around a street lamp." They began to look for an alternative site to establish their college, and they found it at Thorp Spring, a frontier stagecoach stop 40 miles to the southwest, near the fringe of Comanche and Kiowa territory. It was perhaps a marker of their Campbellite sensibilities that the Clarks feared the Indians less than they feared the corrupting influence of "the Acre." AddRan College (TCU) was one of the first coeducational institutions of higher education west of the Mississippi River, a progressive step at a time when only 15% of the national college enrollement was female and almost exclusive enrolled at women's colleges. AddRan's inaugural enrollment was 13 students, though this number rose to 123 by the end of the first term. Shortly thereafter, annual enrollment ranged from 200 to 400. The college formed a partnership with what would become the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1889 and was renamed AddRan Christian University. The church does not own or operate TCU; the partnership is based on a common heritage and shared values. The need for a larger population and transportation base prompted the university to relocate to Waco from 1895 to 1910. A featured speaker at the Waco welcoming ceremony was the president of crosstown rival, Baylor University. The institution was renamed Texas Christian University in 1902, though almost immediately it was dubbed with the unofficial moniker by which it is popularly known today: TCU. In 1910, a fire of unknown origin destroyed the university's main administration building. A group of enterprising Fort Worth businessmen offered the university $200,000 in rebuilding money and a 50-acre campus as an inducement to relocate to their city. This move brought TCU back to the historic source of its institutional roots. It also completed TCU's nearly 40-year transition from a frontier college to an urban university.

Tuition and Fees	2009-2008	2008-2007	2007-2006
Academic year prices for full-time, first-time undergraduate students
In-State	$ 26,948	$ 24,868	$ 23,020
Out of State	$ 26,948	$ 24,868	$ 23,020
Books and Supplies	$ 880	$ 850	$ 810
On-Campus
Room and board	$ 9,600	$ 8,200	$ 7,520
Other Expenses	$ 1,500	$ 3,210	$ 3,150
Off Campus
Room and board	----	----	----
Other Expenses	----	----	----
Off Campus w/ family
Other Expenses	----	----	----

Financial aid 2006-2007

Financial aid to full-time, first-time undergraduate students

Type of Aid	Percentage of students receiving aid	Average amount of aid they received
Federal Grants (scholarship/fellowship)	10%	$ 4,653
State/Local grants (scholarship/fellowship)	20%	$ 3,581
Institutional grants (scholarship/fellowship)	66%	$ 10,383
Loans to students	36%	$ 8,953

End of file for Texas Christian University.