Tuition and Fees

Tuition and fees represent the price that institutions charge students before any grant aid is taken into account. Fees are charges assessed for services such as laboratory expenses, health services, exercise facilities, and art studios and may not be the same for all students. The amounts used in this analysis are the actual charges to individual students and therefore reflect whether they paid in- or out-of-state tuition.

• Average tuition and fees (after adjusting for inflation) have risen substantially.

Dependent undergraduates who attended full time in 1990 were charged an average of $1,100 in tuition and fees at public 2-year institutions, $2,900 at public 4-year institutions, and $12,000 at private not-for-profit 4-year institutions (figure 2). By 2000, the averages had risen to $1,600, $4,300, and $15,900, respectively. The apparent increase at private for-profit less-than-4-year institutions (from $7,300 to $8,000) is not statistically significant.

Despite widespread concern about the affordability of postsecondary education, students have a range of options with price tags that vary widely. Although a relatively small percentage (5 percent) of full-time dependent undergraduates at all 4-year institutions faced tuition and fees of $24,000 or more in 2000, about 44 percent were charged less than $4,000 (figure 3). Students at public and private not-for-profit 4-year institutions faced very different prices, however: about 83 percent of students at public 4-year institutions were charged less than $6,000 in tuition and fees, while about a quarter of those at private not-for-profit institutions were charged $22,000 or more.