When grants, scholarships and tax credits are taken into account, tuition and fees for local students at public universities average about $4,000. They show that in public four-year institutions, net tuition and fees have risen 38 percent since 2005-06, and net tuition, fees, and room and board have risen 28 percent.
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Median family income declined at an average rate of 0.2 percent a year after inflation between 2005 and 2014, while incomes rose 0.8 percent between 1995 and 2005, according to the report.
The four-year campuses in the price survey included Pitt, Penn State, Temple and Lincoln universities as well as the 14 state-owned universities, all of which in the coming months must decide whether they can hold the line again next year. And the idea of free – or, at least, cheap – college wasn’t confined to the Eastern Hemisphere: In the United States, Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were pushing for debt-free tuition options for Americans after high school.
What might be of most interest are the tuitions in the most populated states.
Pennsylvania’s public campuses did manage at least to narrow the gap between themselves and New Jersey, the fourth most expensive state. The difference is now $92; it was $130 a year ago.
Overall, the College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing 2015” report finds that prices nationally are rising at what the organization called a “moderate pace”, though still enough to outpace grant aid.
In fact, Baum said, such disinvestment explains much of the tuition increases at public colleges around the country.
The companion report, “Trends in Student Aid 2015”, shows a continuation of last year’s trend: a decline in student borrowing for college.
“However, the reports also document dramatic increases in published tuition and fees over time, as well as increases in net tuition and fees in the past few years, resulting from the combination of published prices that continue to rise and student aid levels that have not kept up”.
At private nonprofit colleges, average net tuition and fees this fall was $14,890, up from an inflation-adjusted $13,430 the prior year. Enrollment in traditional four-year public and nonprofit colleges has remained stable despite a decline in the number of 18-year-olds.
Still, it is cause for increased attention, the College Board said. “As the price of post-secondary education continues to rise, we need innovative thinking around federal, state and institutional aid that will allow students and families to feel confident that they will be able to pay for college”.
Tuition at public schools averaged $9,410 for in-state students this school year, which is a 2.9 percent annual increase when adjusted for inflation. But that so-called net price climbs to an average $14,120 when room and board are added. Published prices for tuition and fees are up 40 percent during that period.
In Virginia, for example, the average tuition at public universities rose about 6% past year to $11,820.
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State general fund budgets were rocked during the 2008 recession, and legislatures responded by slashing higher education funding by 23 percent per student, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank. The lowest are $4,891 at the University of Wyoming and $6,158 at the University of Montana. In New Hampshire, they are $15,160. Because grant aid and tax benefits per student have leveled off, while sticker prices continue to climb, net prices shot up between 2010-2011 and 2015-2016, according to the report. Borrowing totaled $106 billion in 2014-2015, which is down 6 percent from the previous year, and down 14 percent from the high of $124 billion borrowed in 2010-2011.
