College Board has just published its latest university tuition figures, which gives me an excuse to post one of my favorite charts. This time I'll just look at the past decade:
Average tuition actually charged after standard discounts has dropped 2% since last year and has gone down 40% over the past ten years.
For private universities, actual tuition has gone down 12% over the past ten years.
College Board has been publishing these figures annually for a long time, but you've probably never seen them anywhere but here. Why?
POSTSCRIPT: Just to be clear, the "actual cost" in the chart is an average based on outright grant awards that offset published tuition prices. For public universities, the average grant in 2024 was about $9,000, but that varies. Poor people get more and rich people get less.
"Why have we never seen these figures", or "why has college tuition gone down"?
There seems to be a LOT to unpack in that simple graph. First is "published" vs "actual" costs. While some people are not paying the published costs thanks to aid packages, that is far from all, and costs for out-of-state are very different from in-state. Certainly if you're working or middle class (what little still exists) then an in-state university is reachable with financial aid.
However, the massive increases have been private universities.
To take a sample size of one, my alma mater Northwestern cost $25,000 per year 25 years ago. I know because I was one of those paying full-freight - no need-based aid, no sports scholarship, and Northwestern doesn't provide academic scholarships. $100K for four years was a stretch for my family then, but thankfully only having one child to send and a 15-year bull market made it happen.
Compare that to now (https://admissions.northwestern.edu/tuition-aid/). "Tuition for the 2024–25 academic year is $67,158. Total expenses (including fees, books, housing and food, transportation expenses and transportation) are estimated at $94,878." My $25K figure above was tuition, room, and board). So in 25 years that's a 300% increase, while inflation was less than 100% over the same time. The market has been markedly less stable with multiple recessions, so it's not overcoming that gap the way it did a generation prior (assuming you even had the wherewithal for it).
So money less than doubled while private universities quadrupled. That's a big problem, and one that has NOT been slowing over time (as a parent of two kids, I've been watching this closely). By the time my kids are of age, sending both of them to the same school I went to will be *over a million dollars*.
Furthermore, where is all that money going? I don't see professors getting rich. I don't see class sizes shrinking. And while colleges are building new facilities it's not at a different rate from historical. It almost seems to be going up because it can, not because it needs to.
The reason no one is reporting this one is because it's not an accurate take.
"Furthermore, where is all that money going?..........
It almost seems to be going up because it can, not because it needs to."
Um, I think you are catching on now.
Thanks for the detail, now, someone needs to just do this with housing and finally the problem which led to the rise in Trump can be faced head on.
What your story means is that, if you make the not to crazy assumption that your kids should either go to (a) where you went to college if its right for them, or (b) under the American Dream concept, an even better college - this shows that its not hard to imagine that the higher education system is worse than ever since fewer people can afford what they believe is the "same thing."
Since large swaths of the US higher education system is full capitalist, there is no reason to expect any other result.
Kevin will no doubt (and has done) point out that other things, like tech, have never been better, and he's correct. But as to houses and college capitalism makes things less affordable over time. Because as to both houses and college, there is great inelasticity. I hope I have that right. By that I mean although you can build new houses, they are not the same as the existing stock. Same thing for a "new" university.
diamondsw - Go Cats!
The difficulty is that the published tuition amount doesn't reflect what the vast majority of students will pay. Colleges price like a Kohl's department store: almost no one pays full price. People are enticed by big savings, whether it is a 30% off coupon that shows up every week or thousands of dollars in an "academic scholarship" that nearly everyone qualifies for.
If you Google Northwestern Cost of Attendance you'll see averages listed for various income groups, and they are far below the list price.
Some wealthy families may be paying more than in the past, but the discounting most colleges engage in has actually moderated or wiped out much of the cost increases.
That is exactly what I found when I was looking at sending my kids to college, @Cephalood. And I have even used the Kohl's analogy.
One side product of this is that college admission rates are only part of the "admission decision." The other part is how much aid school give to various candidates who they admit --- it is like a second admission decision in that they pick the kids they REALLY want by offering them more aid. The majority of families I knew weighed basically cost and desirability of the school as their two lead criteria and cost depended a lot on aid offers.
There was a large run up in prices between you attending and 2015, where it seems to have leveled off a bit. A lot of places were adding law schools too...until that went bust.
All-in cost at Washington State University (no assistance) is $25,000–that’s tuition, room, and board. And while my kiddo is there, they aren’t working at the local utility making $25 an hour plus full benefits.
All-in cost at a private liberal arts college is $80,000 a year.
>>All-in cost at a private liberal arts college is $80,000 a year.<<
Only if you're in the 1%. As people upthread have noted, almost nobody pays the "sticker price" after all the financial aid is factored in. In the top Ivies and most selective liberal arts colleges (Williams, Amherst, Pomona, et al.), if your family makes less than around $80-100k a year, it's basically free. No loans, no scholarships. Free.
Of course, your student actually has to get in to those places, where the admissions rate is like 5%, but if you do....
The in-state tuition cost for a year is about the price of a single ticket for a seat near the dugout for a World Series game this year. You can't get a ticket anywhere under $1000, which means anyone going a game is permanently barred from complaining about the high cost of college these days.
Why are we acting like the tuition line item is the only cost of going to college?
Lolol. My brother in Media Narrative Building (TM), total cost of college has increased by about 10% since 2014 at public institutions (inflation adjusted). But I know, I know - colleges weren't using newfangled tricks like non-tuition costs to milk your generation for all it was worth when you went to school. Things are different these days!
"Higher tuition costs have been the primary driver of the overall increasing price of college, but rising supplemental fees have also contributed."
Raw data here, broken down by all institutions, public institutions, and private.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_330.10.asp
Edit: I also can't help but notice that the NCES data differs from your chart (and the College Board's data).
I know which source I trust more.
What about the total cost of attendance? There have been articles about increasing dorm costs in recent years.
I also wonder how distributed the drop is among families. For example, my state recently got rid of all tuition costs for families earning below $80,000, which is a nice cost savings for some, and zippo for anyone making more.
For public colleges student loan amounts look pretty steady from 2010-2021. It looks like there was a 5% drop, but only because of the 2020/21 school year. It's virtually identical between 2010 and 2020. It's hard to imagine that college costs have actually gone down much if the loan amounts are stable.
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=900
OK. Who gets these "standard discounts"? I'm middle class. It is nice that I don't have to worry that I'm about to run out of money at the end of each month, but I don't have $44,000 lying around. I'd have to take out a loan on the house.
But I could swing $2,480 a year even if it would be quite painful. So who gets these discounts? Everyone? Everyone whose parents make less then $150,000? $100,000? $60,000? Cause that makes a big difference.
The data in this link is a few years old, but it does a better job of presenting the information by income level and type of college.
It also includes the non-tuition costs of college which can be substantial. Very few are going to a 4 year college for 2,400 a year.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/ignore-the-sticker-price-how-have-college-prices-really-changed/
Some more data here:
https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/trends/university-of-illinois-at-urbana-champaign/cost-of-attendance/
Smaller state schools are cheaper than the flagship:
https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/compare/tables/?state=PA&level=4-year-or-high
One thing bothers me about these “adjusted for inflation” graphs: the thing you are adjusting for inflation is part of what causes the inflation you are adjusting for. No one category is the main driver of of inflation but it still strikes me as tricksy to say “when compared to all other costs that by 5% a year, the average cost didn’t go up at all”
If you are trying to evaluate a single cost item the most significant comparison is with income. Real median household income has increased somewhat since around 2014 (though not nearly as fast as GDP/capita) so that makes it look like college is getting cheaper according to Kevin's graph. To make it even simpler just leave out the inflation and compare the ratio of nominal college cost to nominal family income.
But to do this right the comparison should probably be on the basis of income quintiles (or deciles if the data permit) since what is actually paid for college is usually highly dependent on that income. Maybe the income should not be total but after housing and other inevitable costs are subtracted. Other factors such as shrinking family size may enter.
Agreed, this is a problem with much of Kevins charting and commentary.
Here he is showing that some (!) college costs are lower relative to the cost of other things in the economy....but his writeup makes very different claims that arent supported by his charts.
The difference in median income for 35-60 year old parents might not be wildly different than the inflation rate.....but it is certainly a different stat.
Its easier to pull inflation data and pretend its equal to median income.
..but its certainly misleading and could lead to very bad conclusions.
The data doesn't fit the narrative that a college education isn't worth the money.
There's a lot of people that don't get grants so it's that published cost that is pertinent.
Florida has fantastic plan that lets you start paying for college as soon as your child is born. It locks in the price of tuition at that time and will adjust of the anticipated cost goes down. You can pay monthly or over five years and can start at any time. (Obviously the monthly payments are more the closer your child is to HS graduation.) When your kid goes off to college the tuition is covered if they go to a FL public school. If they go out of state or to a private school, that tuition value is transferable. They also have dorm plans to cover living in a dorm for 1 to 4 years. This is all in addition to the traditional 529 that is offered. It's great being able to pay a couple hundred dollars a month and knowing the lion's shares of college costs will be covered when your kid goes off to school.
Illinois has had a similar program for decades. I'm sure various other states do too.
Washington does. It’s called the GET program. But it’s only for tuition and fees, not room and board.
You have to look at fees in addition to formal tuition. At my state university, MA, fees were actually more than tuition. I know because my kids were considering but even with free tuition, it would have cost them more to go than the liberal arts colleges they eventually attended. Maybe this has changed in recent years, but I was shocked to find it out in early 2000-2010s when kids were in college.
Not true for other states, like Florida, where as of 5-10 years ago in-state tuition was quite low, and fees nominal.