cost education

Understanding College Costs

Resources to help you pay for college..

A common myth about college is that it’s too expensive. But once students understand what college really costs, they often discover that higher education is within their reach.

College Costs Vary

The biggest part of college costs is usually tuition. Tuition is the price you pay for classes. Along with tuition, you’ll probably have to pay some other fees to enroll in and attend a college. Tuition and fees vary from college to college.

Other college costs include room and board, books and supplies, transportation, and personal expenses. Just like tuition, these costs vary from college to college. And students can find ways to save money on most of these expenses.

You can see that the cost of college depends a lot on the choices you make. There’s something else you should know: The published price of attending a college is not usually what students actually pay. They often pay less, thanks to financial aid.

Financial Aid Reduces Your Cost

Financial aid is money given or lent to you to help you pay for college. It may be awarded to you based on your financial need alone, or based partly on factors such as proven academic or athletic ability. Most full-time college students receive some form of financial aid.

The actual, final price (or “net price”) you’ll pay for a specific college is the difference between the published price (tuition and fees) to attend that college, minus any grants, scholarships, and education tax benefits for which you may be eligible.

The difference between the published price and the net price can be considerable. For example, in 2015-16, the average published price of in-state tuition and fees for public four-year colleges was about $9,410. But the average net price of in-state tuition and fees for public four-year colleges was only about $3,980.

So don’t let the prices published on college websites discourage you. The number you actually need to know is the estimated net price for you. How can you figure that out? Almost all colleges offer a net price calculator on their website. You can also use the College Board’s Net Price Calculator   to estimate your net price at hundreds of colleges.

To find out more about the actual cost of college, read  College Costs: FAQs.

How many college students get financial aid?

Millions of students receive financial aid each year. In 2021-22, undergraduate and graduate students received a total of $234.6 billion in student aid in the form of grants, Federal Work-Study, federal loans, and federal tax credits and deductions.

Can I afford to go to college?

Despite the news stories about rising college prices, a college education is more affordable than most people believe. Many colleges provide an excellent educational experience at a price you can manage. Public college prices are much lower than you might expect, and many private nonprofit colleges provide generous grants and scholarships to offset published costs.

Does applying for financial aid hurt my chances of being admitted?

You’re usually admitted based on your academic performance and the qualities you bring to the campus community. Colleges want to admit a diverse group of students and often use financial aid to achieve that goal. It’s crucial that you apply for financial aid early in the application process before all of a college’s funds are allocated.

Do I qualify for aid even if I don’t get straight A’s?

It's true that some scholarships are awarded based on academic performance. However, most financial aid is based on your family’s financial information provided on an aid application, typically the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) .

Are private colleges out of my reach?

Although the cost of college may be a crucial factor for you, focus instead on finding a college that’s a good fit ─ one that meets your academic, career, and personal needs.

You don’t have to rule out “expensive” schools. Keep in mind that private colleges usually offer generous financial aid to attract students from every income level. Plus, financial aid can come from different sources such as scholarships, grants, and loans. So think about net price (not published price), and don’t be afraid to apply to colleges you think you can’t afford.

Is my family’s income too high to qualify for aid?

Financial aid is intended to make a college education available to students from different financial backgrounds. Family income, the number of family members in college, medical expenses, and other factors may be considered when determining your financial aid eligibility. Even if you think your family income is too high for you to qualify for aid, fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid . This form determines your eligibility for federal and state student grants, work-study, and federal loans.

The best way to get an estimate of how much financial aid a college will offer you and therefore how much you’ll really pay to go to that college is to use the college’s net price calculator. Colleges provide these tools on their websites. Net price calculators give you an estimate of your net price for a particular college (i.e., the cost of attendance minus the gift aid you might get). Learn more about net price .

Should I consider working while I’m attending college?

Each student should consider their financial situation and the weight of their studies. Students who choose to work a moderate amount often do better academically. You may find that working a campus job related to your career goal is a good way to manage college costs, get experience, and engage with the university community.

Can I try to get my aid award revised?

Some colleges are willing to review your financial aid package if your financial situation changes. Consider discussing these changes with the financial aid office if your family has experienced an unexpected decrease in income or increase in expenses since you applied for financial aid.

Financial Aid Checklist

Related Articles

See the Average College Tuition in 2023-2024

The average sticker price for in-state public schools is about one-quarter what's charged by private colleges, U.S. News found.

The average college tuition cost has increased in the 2023-2024 academic year over the prior year across both public and private schools, according to U.S. News data based on an annual survey.

A college's sticker price is the amount advertised as the full rate for tuition and fees before financial need, scholarships and other aid are factored in. Net price is the amount that a family pays after aid and scholarships – usually offsetting the sticker price shock.

The average tuition and fees at private ranked colleges has climbed by about 4% over the last year, according to data for the 2023-2024 school year submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey. At ranked public schools, tuition and fees rose 2% for in-state students and about 1.4% for out-of-staters.

Considering inflation, the year-over-year numbers look a little different. For private ranked colleges, tuition and fees actually decreased by 0.4%. For public ranked schools, there was also a decline: about 2% for in-state students and about 3% for out-of-state students.

Schools reported this data in spring and summer of 2023. Some colleges offer tuition discounts to eligible students: 341 private nonprofit colleges and universities reported an average estimated tuition discount rate of 56.2% for full-time, first-year, first-time students in 2022-2023, according to a study from the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

But the cost of education remains a significant financial challenge for many families, who often underestimate the price.

According to the 2023 Fidelity Investments survey College Savings & Student Debt , 1 in 4 high school students believe the total cost of attendance for one year of college equals $5,000 or less. This number is far below what they're likely to pay at public and private four-year colleges.

The average in-state cost of tuition and fees to attend a ranked public college is nearly 75% less than the average sticker price at a private college, at $10,662 for the 2023-2024 year compared with $42,162, respectively, U.S. News data shows. The average cost for out-of-state students at public colleges comes to $23,630 for the same year.

In addition to tuition and fees, students must also pay other expenses, such as housing , food and books, which can run thousands of dollars a year.

A Look at the Best Value Schools

But sticker prices don't tell the whole story. Private schools can often make up the price gap through tuition discounts and institutional aid.

While Princeton University in New Jersey, for instance, advertised a sticker price of $57,410 for tuition and fees in 2022-2023, the average cost to students after receiving need-based grants that year was about $17,464.

Since 1993, U.S. News has provided information on the Best Value Schools , looking at academic quality and price, and factoring in the net cost of attendance for a student after receiving the average level of need-based financial aid.

Harvard University is the No. 1 Best Value School among National Universities, schools that are often research-oriented and offer bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.

Harvard provided need-based grants to 54% of undergraduates. The highly selective Massachusetts school offered an average need-based scholarship or grant award of $65,053 to undergraduates in 2022-2023. That amount exceeded the school's tuition and fees that year of $57,261, sometimes going toward other costs, like room and board.

Some regional schools, including those not as selective as Harvard, also provide significant need-based financial aid.

For example, although Berry College charged $39,376 in tuition and fees last year, 68% of students received need-based grants. The Georgia institution's financial aid awards in 2022-2023 dropped the average net price for students to $25,630.

Below is a chart showing the top-ranked Best Value Schools in each of the U.S. News categories – National Universities , National Liberal Arts Colleges , Regional Colleges and Regional Universities – along with the percent of undergraduates who received need-based grants and the average cost of attendance after grants.

The data above is correct as of Sept. 20, 2023. For complete cost data, full rankings and much more, access the U.S. News College Compass .

College Tuition Costs

• Average College Tuition in 2023-2024
• What to Know About College Tuition Costs
• Tuition Growth at National Universities
• The Cost of Private vs. Public Colleges

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The cost of college in the United States - Statistics & Facts

Taking out student loans to afford higher education, is college still worth the cost, key insights.

Detailed statistics

University tuition costs and fees U.S. 2000-2022

Room and board cost per year at U.S. universities 2000-2019

Most expensive colleges in the U.S. 2021-2022

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Current statistics on this topic.

Educational Institutions & Market

Total student loans provided in the U.S. 2001-2023

Value of outstanding student loans U.S. 2006-2023

Related topics

Recommended.

• Cost of living U.S.
• Saving for college in the U.S.
• Back-to-college

Recommended statistics

• Basic Statistic Average annual costs of attending a 4-year university U.S. 2000-2022
• Basic Statistic Average undergraduate budgets U.S. 2023/24, by expense and institution type
• Basic Statistic Tuition cost and student loan amounts U.S. 2021/22, by institution type
• Basic Statistic Average debt of university graduates in the U.S. 2008-2022
• Basic Statistic Number of student aid applicants in the U.S. 2006-2022

Average annual costs of attending a 4-year university U.S. 2000-2022

Average annual undergraduate tuition, fees, room, and board for full-time students in four-year postsecondary institutions in the United States from the academic year 2000/01 to 2021/22 (in U.S. dollars)

Average undergraduate budgets U.S. 2023/24, by expense and institution type

Average estimated undergraduate student budget in the United States in academic year 2023/24, by expense category and institution type (in U.S. dollars)

Tuition cost and student loan amounts U.S. 2021/22, by institution type

Average tuition and fees compared to average student loan amount received in the United States 2021/22, by institution type (in U.S. dollars)

Average debt of university graduates in the U.S. 2008-2022

Average university graduate debt levels in the United States from 2008 to 2022 (in U.S. dollars)

Number of student aid applicants in the U.S. 2006-2022

Number of applicants for federal student aid in the United States from 2006/07 to 2021/22 (in millions)

Tuition and fees

• Basic Statistic University tuition costs and fees U.S. 2000-2022
• Basic Statistic Average cost to attend a U.S. university 2013-2024, by institution type
• Basic Statistic Average tuition costs when studying in-state at U.S. universities by state 2018/19
• Premium Statistic Average tuition and fees at U.S. flagship universities 2023-24
• Premium Statistic In-state vs out-of-state tuition at public four-year institutions U.S. 2022, by state
• Premium Statistic Annual tuition and fees at leading universities U.S. 2023/24
• Basic Statistic Room and board cost per year at U.S. universities 2000-2019
• Basic Statistic Most expensive colleges in the U.S. 2021-2022

Average cost for tuition and required fees at all degree-granting postsecondary institutions* in the United States from 2000/01 to 2021/22 (in U.S. dollars)

Average cost to attend a U.S. university 2013-2024, by institution type

Average annual cost to attend university in the United States from 2013/14 to 2023/2024, by institution type (in U.S. dollars)

Average tuition costs when studying in-state at U.S. universities by state 2018/19

Average tuition and fees per year when studying in-state at U.S. universities 2018/19, by state (in U.S. dollars)

Average tuition and fees at U.S. flagship universities 2023-24

Average In-state vs. out-of-state tuition at flagship universities in the United States in academic year 2023-24, by state (in U.S. dollars)

In-state vs out-of-state tuition at public four-year institutions U.S. 2022, by state

Average in-state vs. out-of-state tuition at public four-year institutions in the United States in 2022-23, by state (in U.S. dollars)

Annual tuition and fees at leading universities U.S. 2023/24

Annual tuition and fees for full-time students at leading universities in the United States in 2023/24 (in U.S. dollars)

Average cost for room and board at U.S. universities per year from the academic year of 2000/01 to 2018/19 (in U.S. dollars)

Most expensive colleges in the United States for the academic year of 2021-2022, by total annual cost (in U.S. dollars)

Distribution of student aid

• Basic Statistic Total student grants provided in the U.S. 2002-2023
• Basic Statistic Total student loans provided in the U.S. 2001-2023
• Basic Statistic Graduate student aid in the U.S. 2022/23, by source and type
• Basic Statistic U.S. undergraduate student aid 2022-2023, by source and type
• Basic Statistic Amount of student loans offered, by federal loan program U.S. 2017-2023
• Basic Statistic Amount of student aid paid U.S. 2017-2023, by federal grant program
• Basic Statistic Expenditure on Federal Pell Grants in the U.S. 1981-2023
• Premium Statistic Grant aid as percentage of total state financial support U.S. 2020/21, by state

Total student grants provided in the U.S. 2002-2023

Total amount provided in student grants in the United States from 2002/03 to 2022/23 (in billion 2022 U.S. dollars)

Total amount provided in student loans in the United States from 2002/01 to 2022/23 (in 2022 billion U.S. dollars)

Graduate student aid in the U.S. 2022/23, by source and type

Amount of graduate student aid provided in the United States in the academic year 2022/23, by source and type (in billion U.S. dollars)

U.S. undergraduate student aid 2022-2023, by source and type

Amount of undergraduate student aid provided in the United States in 2022-2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Amount of student loans offered, by federal loan program U.S. 2017-2023

Total amount of student aid distributed in the United States, by federal loan program from 2017/2018 to 2022/2023 (in 2022 million U.S. dollars)

Amount of student aid paid U.S. 2017-2023, by federal grant program

Total amount of student aid distributed in the United States from 2017/2018 to 2022/2023, by federal grant program (in 2022 million U.S. dollars)

Expenditure on Federal Pell Grants in the U.S. 1981-2023

Total expenditure on Federal Pell Grant Awards in the United States from 1981/82 to 2022/23 (in billion 2022 U.S. dollars)

Grant aid as percentage of total state financial support U.S. 2020/21, by state

Share of the total state support for higher education spent on grant aid in the United States in the 2020/21 academic year, by state

Student aid received

• Basic Statistic Share of students receiving student aid in the U.S. 2020-2021, by type of aid
• Basic Statistic Percentage of U.S. students with student loans 2020/21, by institution type
• Basic Statistic Share of Federal Pell Grants recipients U.S. 2012-2023
• Basic Statistic Recipients of Federal Pell Grants in the U.S. 1980-2023
• Basic Statistic Share of U.S. students' expenses covered by Pell grants 2003/04-2023/24
• Basic Statistic Total Education tax savings for college students U.S. 2002-2023
• Premium Statistic Student grant aid at public 2-year institutions U.S. 2006-2023
• Premium Statistic Student grant aid at public 4-year institutions U.S. 2006-2023
• Premium Statistic Student grant aid in private nonprofit 4-year institutions U.S. 2006-2022

Share of students receiving student aid in the U.S. 2020-2021, by type of aid

Share of university students receiving student aid in the United States for the 2020/21 academic year, by type of aid and institution

Percentage of U.S. students with student loans 2020/21, by institution type

Percentage of students attending 2-year and 4-year institutions who have student loans in the United States 2020/21, by type of institution

Share of Federal Pell Grants recipients U.S. 2012-2023

Share of Federal Pell Grant recipients in the United States, as percentage of total undergraduate enrollment from 2012/13 to 2022/23

Recipients of Federal Pell Grants in the U.S. 1980-2023

Number of recipients of the Federal Pell Grant Award in the United States from 1980/81 to 2022/23 (in millions)

Share of U.S. students' expenses covered by Pell grants 2003/04-2023/24

Percentage of U.S. students' expenses for tuition fees, room and board covered by Pell grants from 2003/2004 to 2023/2024

Total Education tax savings for college students U.S. 2002-2023

Total Education tax savings for college students and their parents across the United States from 2002/2003 to 2022/2023 (in billion 2022 U.S. dollars)

Student grant aid at public 2-year institutions U.S. 2006-2023

Average grant aid per student at public two-year institutions in the United States from academic year 2006/07 to 2022/23 (in U.S. dollars)

Student grant aid at public 4-year institutions U.S. 2006-2023

Average grant aid per student at public four-year institutions in the United States from academic year 2006/07 and 2022/23 (in U.S. dollars)

Student grant aid in private nonprofit 4-year institutions U.S. 2006-2022

Average grant aid per student at private nonprofit 4-year institutions in the United States from academic year 2006/07 to 2022/23 (in U.S. dollars)

Student debt

• Premium Statistic Value of outstanding student loans U.S. 2006-2023
• Basic Statistic Average student debt for a 4-year bachelor's degree, by institution type U.S. 2020/21
• Basic Statistic Per capita debt of university graduates in the U.S. 2003-2019
• Basic Statistic Share of U.S. graduates with debt 2003-2019
• Basic Statistic U.S. student loan borrowers' debt levels in public four-year colleges 2006-2022
• Basic Statistic U.S. student loan borrowers' debt levels, private four-year colleges 2006-2022
• Basic Statistic Average student debt U.S. 2020, by state
• Premium Statistic Share of Americans with student loan debt U.S. 2023, by state
• Basic Statistic Student loan cohort default rate in the U.S. 2019, by institution type
• Basic Statistic Average student debt of students at top U.S. universities 2023
• Premium Statistic Students with federal loans for higher education U.S. 2023, by repayment status

Value of outstanding student loans in the United States from Q1 2006 to Q3 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Average student debt for a 4-year bachelor's degree, by institution type U.S. 2020/21

Average student loan debt for a four-year bachelor's degree in the United States in 2020/21, by institution type (in U.S. dollars)

Per capita debt of university graduates in the U.S. 2003-2019

Per capita graduate debt levels in the United States from the academic year of 2003/04 to 2018/19 (in U.S. dollars)

Share of U.S. graduates with debt 2003-2019

Share of graduates with debt in the United States from the academic years 2003/04 to 2018/19

U.S. student loan borrowers' debt levels in public four-year colleges 2006-2022

Average amount of debt per borrower at public four-year colleges and universities in the United States from 2006/07 to 2021/22 (in 2022 U.S. dollars)

U.S. student loan borrowers' debt levels, private four-year colleges 2006-2022

Average amount of debt per borrower at private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities in the United States from 2006/07 to 2021/22 (in 2022 U.S. dollars)

Average student debt U.S. 2020, by state

Average debt of university graduates in the United States in 2020, by state (in U.S. dollars)

Share of Americans with student loan debt U.S. 2023, by state

Share of Americans who have some form of student loan debt in their name in the United States in 2023, by state of residence

Student loan cohort default rate in the U.S. 2019, by institution type

Percentage of students in default on student loans after attending 2-year and 4-year institutions United States in 2019, by institution type

Average student debt of students at top U.S. universities 2023

Average student debt of students at the top 20 U.S. universities in 2023 (in U.S. dollars)

Students with federal loans for higher education U.S. 2023, by repayment status

Distribution of federal education loan recipients in the United States as of second quarter fiscal year 2023, by repayment status

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How are college costs adding up these days and how much has tuition risen? Graphics explain

College decision day is closing in and many prospective students are making commitments to their university of choosing. With that commitment comes an enrollment deposit – one of many fees students will pay in the next four years.

Of the more than 60,000 high school graduates, 64% will go on to enroll in two- or four-year college programs. Many will incur debt and join the already 43.5 million Americans who have student loans.

Last year, President Joe Biden's student debt cancellation plan was struck down by the Supreme court. Now he's proposing a workaround that could cancel the loans of more than four million borrowers, according to the White House . In addition, more than 10 million borrowers could get $5,000 in debt relief.

Whether or not the new proposal works, many college students will be paying nearly two-fold what their parents paid for an undergraduate education 20 years earlier. According to the Education Data Initiative, the average cost of college tuition and fees at public four-year institutions has risen 179.2% over the last two decades.

How much does college tuition cost?

The average cost of an undergraduate degree ranges from  $25,707 to over $218,000 , according to the Education Data Initiative. The price varies and depends on whether a student lives on campus and the institution they're attending.

According to the most recent data from the Education Department, the average tuition at a four-year private nonprofit university increased 14% between the fall of 2010 and fall of 2021.

Chart shows rise in cost of 4-year college

In 2023, the average full time student at a four-year college spent nearly $31,000 on their tuition fees, room and board for the year. That number is more than double amount paid for the same education in the 1960s, adjusted for inflation in 2022-2023 dollars.

Why is college tuition rising?

The demand for a college education is going up – at the same time government funding for postsecondary education is on the decline, according to Bankrate.

The personal finance website pointed out several key areas that have lead to an increase in tuition costs:

• The cost of operation is increasing, due to rising inflation. The inflation rate increased 3.5% between March 2023 and 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With rising inflation comes increased cost of living. Universities must pay highly educated professors more to keep up with rising living costs.
• A reduction in state funding led to increased tuition costs, according to the National Education Association. An analysis from NEA found that state funding for higher education decreased in 37 states by an average of 6% between 2020 and 2021.
• Colleges are spending more on administrative services: A 2021 study found that between 2010 and 2018, spending on student services and administration grew by 29% and 19% respectively.

Some universities are already estimating the cost of attendance for the 2024-2025 academic year to be nearly $100,000.

Watch CBS News

What's behind the sky-high cost of a college education — and are there any solutions?

By Kathryn Watson

Updated on: November 5, 2022 / 12:41 PM EDT / CBS News

The Biden administration's announcement that up to $20,000 in student loan debt will be canceled for borrowers will bring welcome relief to millions, as long as courts allow . But that relief won't do anything to slow the rapidly rising cost of going to college.

In the 1963-1964 academic year, the average annual published cost of in-state tuition and fees was $243 at public four-year institutions, and $1,011 at private four-year institutions, according to National Center for Education Statistics data . That excludes room and board. 

If the published cost of college remained in line with inflation, annual tuition and fees would have been $2,076 at four-year public universities and $8,624 at private institutions for the 2020-2021 academic year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics' data in constant dollars, or income adjusted for inflation.

But in the 2020-2021 academic year, the average price tag for in-state tuition and fees at a four-year public institution was $9,375, and at private four-year institutions, it was a whopping $32,825. With student housing, that cost skyrockets — some schools are charging those who can afford it over $70,000 per year .

Why is college so expensive?

"There's no one single answer," says Beth Akers, author of "Making College Pay" and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "You can ask lots of different people and they have lots of different reasons."

However, the sticker price an institution lists on its website and the net price can be pretty far apart, said Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College. The net price is what students pay after needs-based aid and merit scholarships. The net price has increased at a faster rate at public institutions, where state funding hasn't kept pace with the increase in price.

The government doesn't track the net price students pay at public vs. private institutions. But according to the College Board, students on average receive more financial aid at private institutions. And the net price families paid at private colleges for tuition, room and board was about $33,720 at private institutions, compared with $19,230 at public colleges for the 2021-2022 academic year.  

In the last two decades, the published price of tuition and fees at private four-year institutions has increased much more rapidly than the net tuition. Over the last 20 years, their sticker prices have gone up 54% in inflation-adjusted dollars, even though net tuition prices — what students are paying after factoring in grants and scholarships — have gone up just 7%, according to College Board and National Center for Education Statistics data analyzed by the Manhattan Institute. 

For many public institutions that have been seeing decreases in state funding, the financial picture is worse. The published price for tuition and fees has increased 102% at public four-year institutions, adjusted for inflation, with net tuition and fees at public four-year schools running 115% higher in the last 20 years. 

"A lot of times we overestimate the rising cost of college," Levine said. "Because mostly what we do is focus on the sticker price.

But the vast majority of students don't pay the sticker price at public or private schools, he said.  

Public institutions have "shifted away from funding through taxpayer support and toward collecting revenue through individual tuition charges," said Akers.

Students from upper-middle class and affluent families who often comprise the governing and media classes are the ones paying full price, Levine noted.

"The discrepancy is that's the price that high-income families have to pay," Levine said. 

Administrative costs and facilities 

The number of administrative staff added at higher education institutions has outpaced the hiring of teaching faculty in recent decades. 

The number of administrators at higher education institutions grew twice as fast in the 25 years ending in 2012 as the number of students did, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting found by analyzing federal data. 

And from 2010 to 2018, spending on student services increased 29% and spending on administrative functions increased 19%, while spending on instruction only grew 17%, according to a 2021 report from the American Council on Trustees and Alumni. 

Colleges and universities have become more comprehensive in the services that they offer, and in general, students are reaping the benefits, said Janet Napolitano , the former Arizona governor and former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security who was president of the University of California system for seven years. 

"I never had students come to me and say, we need fewer Title IX officers, or we need to reduce mental health services or we need to reduce the number of people who help in the financial aid office," said Napolitano, who is now the director of the Center for Security in Politics at the University of California, Berkeley. 

"The point being is that over time, as universities have absorbed the cost of providing not just the academic teaching and research aspect of a college education but all the kind of adjunct or associated services that go along with it, that, too, has I think added to the cost." 

But administrative spending doesn't account for most of the increase in the sticker price of college, Akers said.  

Then, there are the headlines about luxury amenities for students, like lazy rivers at Texas Tech University, or climbing walls at the University of Maryland. But those additions are also facile targets, and still don't come close to explaining the increase in the sticker price for college, Akers said. 

Market forces

Higher education is competitive —  Harvard and Princeton will always be competing for the same very select pool of the nation's most promising students. 

"It's also the case that in some ways higher education doesn't look like a normal market," Levine said. 

In a normal market, everyone pays the same price. "Everyone doesn't pay the same price in higher education," Levine said. At many schools, those who can afford less pay less, and at a handful of the nation's most elite schools, including Harvard, Yale and Stanford, students who are accepted and whose family income is under around $60,000 get a free ride .

That lack of price transparency in what the net price will be for a prospective student is aso something that distorts the market, Levine noted, since most college applicants don't know what they'll actually pay until after they're accepted, commit to a university and apply for aid. 

Levine created a tool, MyinTuition , through which students can estimate their net tuition cost based on factors like how much their family has in savings and investments, their GPA and their SAT scores. He  built  the tool when he was trying to figure out how much he would pay for his own kids' college education. 

But his website doesn't include the majority of higher education institutions, and the calculator is just an estimate, and isn't binding.

Student loans 

Then there are student loans. 

"People claim all the time the fact that we've allowed people to borrow so much is driving up the price, and I think there's some truth in that," Akers said. 

"It's not really a basic economic argument that the availability of loans has driven up the price, but I think it's more of a behavioral thing."

Millions of Americans will continue to attend college and take on mountains of debt to do so because the financial — and even social — benefits of attending college still generally outweigh the financial cost, Akers and Levine each noted.

"The returns to graduating from college are significant," Levine said. "And simple calculations basically will indicate that for the typical student, attending college definitely pays off relative to its cost."

But "that doesn't mean it pays off for everybody," Levine added. 

Men with bachelor's degrees earn about $900,000 more in median lifetime earnings than their high school graduate counterparts, according to Social Security Administration data . Women with bachelor's degrees earn $630,000 more during their lifetimes than women with only a high school diploma. 

And a 2021 study from Georgetown University found high school graduates make a median of $1.6 million during their lifetimes, compared to $2.8 million for those with bachelor's degrees. 

So, over the span of a lifetime, spending say $100,000 for a college education with those returns is a relative "bargain," Akers said. 

Millions will continue to pay more and more for college, so long as the benefit generally outweighs the cost. But at some point, "the market forces will continue to drive up the price until it's no longer worth it," Akers said. 

Napolitano is skeptical of the Republican argument that universities will use the Biden administration student loan forgiveness as an opportunity to significantly ratchet up prices. 

"I think any college president who relies on the assumption that loans in the future will be canceled is living in a fairy land," she said. 

Are there any solutions? 

Akers said the solution to addressing the ever-increasing cost of college is the opposite of the student loan cancellation the Biden administration is undertaking.

That said, "I don't want to eliminate subsidies," said Akers. "I don't want to eliminate the student loan program."

But graduates who can afford to pay back loans should be required to do so, she said. 

One avenue to reducing costs would be cutting the time it takes to obtain a college degree. If students are able to receive college credit for coursework while they're still in high school or even middle school, that would shorten the time they're paying for four-year colleges. Napolitano, for instance, thinks state governments should further incentivize students to attend community college, to attend far less expensive community colleges, both while they're still in high school and after, so they can transfer those credits to a four-year institution. 

There also should be more pathways to securing good, well-paying jobs, Akers said, adding she thinks there's "going to be kind of a natural correction," with more employers dropping requirements for college degrees. Some companies have already begun to do that in today's tight labor market. Apprenticeship programs and trades should be celebrated, she argued, saying that political and social leaders need to celebrate those pathways, too.

• Student Loan

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital based in Washington, D.C.

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College tuition has increased — but what’s the actual cost?

More and more Americans are going to college as tuition increases. But what’s the actual cost of higher education? Here’s an analysis of how colleges finances work and how tuition factors in.

Updated on Tue, October 3, 2023 by the USAFacts Team

More and more Americans are going to college. According to data from the Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 1980, 50% of high school graduates between the ages of 16 and 24 were enrolled in college; in 2016, it was 70%. In 2016, 19.3 million undergraduate students were enrolled in higher education institutions. 70% were enrolled at public schools, 23% at private non-profits schools and 7% at private for-profit schools. The cost of going to college has also changed since 1980 — however, how much it has changed depends on whether you look at the “sticker price” or the net price after financial aid.

Tuition is an increasingly important revenue source

After adjusting for inflation, the average undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board has more than doubled since 1964, from $10,040 to $23,835 in 2018. Tuition has recently grown the fastest at public and private non-profit institutions, for which tuition has gone up 65% and 50%, respectively, since 2000. Tuition at private for-profit institutions has only increased 11%. However, as we describe below, the sticker price (our term for full tuition without aid) only reflects what one shrinking group of students pays for college.

Average undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board Constant 2017-18 dollars

As tuition has increased, the revenue makeup for many institutions has also shifted, with government funding making up a smaller proportion of revenue for schools, and tuition payments making up a larger proportion. At public institutions, state, local and private funding has decreased from making up 50% of revenue in 1981 to 29% in 2016. It’s not just public schools experiencing a shift in funding sources. Private institutions, which have historically relied on tuition and fees even more than public institutions, have also seen federal funding drop from 19% of revenue to 13%. Tuition payments are making up a larger proportion of their revenue as a result. University-affiliated hospitals are also increasingly important revenue streams for public and private schools, as well as a growing component of institution expenditures.

Average undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board (Constant 2017-18 dollars, by institution type)

Non-profit Institutions

Average undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board (Constant 2017-18 dollars, by institution level)

Two-year Institutions

Despite these shifts in revenues, colleges have not really altered how they spend money. Public schools spend heavily on instruction and student services, with expenditures shifting slightly from instruction to student services during the last 30 years. Both private non-profit and for-profit institutions also spent most of their revenue in these areas, though non-profits have shifted more dollars away from student services and more toward “Other” spending (a miscellaneous category that contains expenses that don’t fit in other categories, such as an early retirement program for faculty and staff ), while for-profit institutions have shifted dollars toward student services.

However, expenditures can vary greatly by institution. For example, top research universities may spend a much larger proportion of expenditures on research—for example, University of California Berkeley spends 26% of expenditures on research—whereas many post-secondary institutions, such as Berkeley City College, may spend nothing on research.

Institution revenues (Public institutions)

Auxiliary enterprises in the United States

$27,581,335,730

Institution revenues (Private non-profit institutions)

Investment income gains (losses) in the United States

-$2,736,521,305

Institution revenues (Private for-profit institutions)

Student tuition and fees in the United States

$14,429,842,000

Sticker v.s. net price

While the sticker price of college is increasing, fewer students are paying the full price due to grant aid. For example, while the average tuition at public institutions in 2016 was $17,459, the average tuition revenue institutions received on average per full-time student was only $7,547.

Federal grants are the most common type of aid students receive — about two in five students at public and non-profit schools receive some form of federal grant aid compared to two-thirds of students at for-profit schools. There are four major types of federal grants , the largest of which is the Pell Grant program, which is available for students for whom the difference between cost of attendance and the expected family contribution exceeds a certain amount (roughly $600 for full-time students according to information provided in a student’s FAFSA ( IFAP )).

Across almost all categories and school types, more students are awarded grant aid to pay for school, meaning fewer students are paying the list price. In 2000, 44.4% of all undergraduates received grant aid, whereas in 2016, that number increased to 63.1%.

Institution expenditures (Public institutions)

Instruction in the United States

$108,162,492,300

Institution expenditures (Private non-profit institutions)

Student services, academic and institutional support in the United States

$32,937,346,000

Institution expenditures (Private for-profit institutions)

$9,198,033,000

Note: These categories are not mutually exclusive — many students receive multiple types of aid. The population covered in this table is first-time, full-time students at degree-granting institutions.

The average amount of grant aid has also increased, but few types of grant aid have increased at the same rate as tuition, which has increased 53% since 2001.

While federal grants are the most common form of aid, the largest forms of aid from a monetary standpoint, are institutional grants and scholarships. The average amount of federal aid received per student receiving aid ranged between $4,453 and $5,208 per school year.

Percent of full-time, first-time undergraduate students awarded grant aid (Public)

Percent of full-time, first-time undergraduate students awarded grant aid (private non-profit), percent of full-time, first-time undergraduate students awarded grant aid (private for-profit).

So, what does this mean most students end up paying? For the roughly 55% of students receiving any form of federal aid—including federal grants, loans, or work-study aid — the average annual net price of the school, or the sticker price minus any government or institutional grants and scholarships, was $16,147 in the 2016-17 school year.

This average net price varies based both by the student’s family income and by the type of school. A family earning $30,000 per year may on average pay $9,510 per year for their child to attend a four-year public institution (48% of the average sticker price). Enrolling in a four-year, private non-profit institution would cost $20,150 per year, or 44% of the average private non-profit sticker price.

Note: Net price data is for students receiving some form of federal aid—including federal grants, loans, or work-study aid. For this reason, data for students from higher-income families is more limited and may not be representative.

When looking at students receiving any form of federal aid, the net price of college has not dramatically changed since 2010. While the sticker price average for four-year institutions has increased 12.4% since 2010, the net price has only increased 1.7%. For two-year institutions, the sticker price increased 10.8%, whereas the net price decreased 5.6%. The percent of students receiving any form of federal aid has also increased from 36.6% in 2001 to 55.9% in 2016. This appears to be part of a larger trend of federal funding shifting from operating grants and non-operating appropriations to non-operating grants, which includes grant aid to students like Pell Grants.

Note: Net price data is for students receiving some form of federal aid—including federal grants, loans, or work-study aid.

However, not all students who need financial help qualify for federal aid and increasing sticker prices are still felt by many students. In 2017, while 56% students received federal aid, 83% of students received either government or institution grants or student loans (excluding Parent PLUS loans). For many students, what’s left over after grant aid — if they even receive grant aid — requires student loans.

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Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics

Department of Education, College Scorecard

Department of Education, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System

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Related articles, which states have the highest and lowest adult literacy rates.

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Inflation-adjusted median annual earnings of full-time workers aged 25-34

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Why Has the Cost of Education Skyrocketed?

Author: Mayuri Hebbar, Graphics: Bella Aharonian

The BRB Bottomline:

Are you planning on going to college but worried about the cost? The cost of education has increased significantly in the past couple of decades. Continue reading to learn more about this increase as well as ways to mitigate the potential future financial burden of attending college.

Exploring the Cost of Education

Introduction.

In the United States, attending college is usually perceived as a huge financial burden. But was college always this expensive? Not really. In fact, since 1980, the average cost of college tuition has increased by 1200% . What happened? In the past couple of decades, education has transformed into more of a profit-maximizing industry, and society has placed more cultural emphasis on attending college.

Education Historically

Historically, education was primarily only accessible to wealthy, white men . This problematic restriction systematically furthered the cycle of poverty by requiring applicants of higher-paying jobs to have a college degree—thus effectively barring non-white, non-male members of the workforce from pursuing high-powered, high-paying careers. As a result, members of minority groups were largely held back in a perpetual cycle of poverty and restriction to higher education. Today, social progress has resulted in a drastic reduction of race, age, and gender, negatively impacting access to higher education.

Education in the United States Versus Other Countries

As expected, developing nations sink less money into further education than does the United States. In contrast to America, gender inequality in education still creates major setbacks for female students in areas of poverty and “geographic remoteness.” This inequality is largely driven by fundamental issues, such as a lack of public transport to educational institutions or dangerous travel conditions, which makes parents less willing to send their daughters to school due to safety concerns. Therefore, without the prerequisite primary and secondary education, many girls in these nations cannot attend college, driving down the demand and thereby the market price of further education.

However, more developed countries also spend less on higher education compared to the United States— countries that have consistently outperformed the U.S. in terms of literacy rates and other metrics. The U.S. spends more on education at the post-secondary level than does any other country. In fact, the U.S. spends approximately $30,000 per student, while the average spending across other countries, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), was just over half of that, at $16,100 per student . This seemingly counterintuitive disparity can be explained by the fact that individuals in other countries are able to more easily access education—and therefore, those countries outrank the U.S. in education-related metrics. 

So why does the United States relegate itself to a counterproductive system of pricing up its college tuition? There are a number of factors at play in the U.S. that have resulted in a high cost of education. The $30,000 that students spend on average for post-secondary education includes any publicly-funded loans or grants that the student receives. Additionally, students are more likely to attend college away from home , and the added living expenses increase the total cost of going to college. Tuition for out-of-state and private colleges is more expensive than in-state tuition, so selecting out-of-state or private colleges can also raise the cost of education. 

In other countries, there are substantial government initiatives that help subsidize the costs of education. Likewise, the U.S. government offers financial aid through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) program. However, FAFSA provides less relief from hefty college tuition compared to analogous programs in other countries. There are a few reasons for this discrepancy . Firstly, the size of loans given out is not enough to fully cover the cost of education. On top of that, complex paperwork that needs to be accurately filled out in order to be considered for a loan makes financial aid harder to receive. Lastly, most colleges do not offer financial aid or accept FAFSA for international students. With all of these factors being considered, there are not enough financial support resources within the U.S. to meet the increasing demand for higher education, and as a result, the price of education continues to skyrocket and become increasingly unaffordable for many students.

Why is the Cost of Education so High?

The cost of higher education has increased by over 100% in the last 20 years—a much higher rate compared to most other industries. This increase in the cost of tuition is paralleled by the increasingly widespread mentality that you need a college education in order to earn a good living. While this may generally be true across many industries, a college education does not reap the same value for every individual. The cost of education is not always proportional to income earned after graduation; this ratio differs across different majors, professions, colleges, and individual circumstances at the end of the day. So while a college education may pave the way to more opportunities—generally speaking, it is not the end-all-be-all answer to success. In more recent years, most students see college as the final destination after high school; therefore, families are willing to pay a premium, and students are willing to take out loans and work multiple jobs to afford an education. This mentality contributes to more and more students seeking out a college education, increasing the demand for a college degree, which thereby raises the price of college since educational systems are aware that families are willing to pay such high prices for a college education.

Preparing to Pay for College

College is expensive, which is why if college is on a student’s radar, they can work with their families or caregivers to come up with a plan that would reduce potential financial burden. For example, there are different savings plans , including mutual funds , Roth IRAs, and 529 plans, that can be set up before a student heads off to college. There are pros and cons associated with each, but in general, most of these different accounts are tax-sheltered, which means that money can be deposited into the account without being taxed and will grow until the student needs that money to pay for college. 

The 529 savings plan is one of the most popular forms of savings accounts for college as it offers tax benefits if the money is used specifically for college. Additionally, all money earned from interest rates is completely tax-free and is not taxable upon withdrawal to use to pay for college expenses. There are different sub-plans within the 529 savings plan, which have high maximum amount limits for the account and also allow for larger deposits. Investing early into these types of savings accounts is really beneficial as it allows money to grow over time, making paying for college a lot less stressful. 

Additionally, much of the U.S. population is made up of the middle-class, who make enough money to not receive financial aid but still cannot comfortably pay for college, especially when multiple children in a household are going to college at the same time. From a policy standpoint, increasing aid and scholarship opens more opportunities for middle-class families since oftentimes their financial struggles are overlooked. Offering loans, grants, and scholarships specifically geared towards middle-class families could help to somewhat subsidize the cost of education for these families, making higher education a more attainable reality. In doing so, the government is also playing a part in actively giving these students the chance to achieve financial independence and move higher up in the socioeconomic ladder . An increasing demand for a college education doesn’t have to correspond to unsustainable costs. There are measures in both the form of personal investments and government policy that can be taken to help mitigate the cost for those interested in going to college.

So the question remains: what can the student from an average household do to help alleviate the financial burden of college tuition? Students need to ask themselves if college is even right for them and figure out why they even want to go to college in the first place. Will a college degree facilitate the process of getting them to their dream career, or are they going to college simply because everyone else is and they do not know what better to do with their time? This question cannot be answered easily until students are one or two years away, but that does not mean that families need to wait until that point to start saving for college. Good financial planning always accounts for the “financially worst case” situation, which in this context would mean needing to pay for college. Therefore, planning for college should start much sooner, preferably as early as possible. Investing a little bit every year into a college savings plan, like a 529 savings plan, will help alleviate the burden of paying for college if the student decides to attend in the future.

Take-Home Points

• In the United States, attending college is usually perceived as a huge financial burden. The average cost of college education has drastically increased in recent years, but it wasn’t always this expensive. 
• Historical gender and racial barriers to education have furthered the cycle of poverty, resulting in minimal access to minority groups pursuing high-powered, high-paying careers.
• In developing countries, there is a lesser demand for higher education which results in lower prices for higher education in comparison to the U.S.
• Less developed foreign countries spend less on education, which makes it more accessible for students.
• American students are more likely to attend college away from home, which results in more expenses. 
• FAFSA provides less relief than in analogous foreign countries for several reasons.
• The cost of education is also so high due to the mentality that you need a good education to have a successful and high-paying career. 
• There are several ways to pay for college such as Roth IRAs, 529 savings plans, and mutual funds. 
• While going to college is expensive, with careful financial planning, the burden can ultimately be mitigated. 

Great article. I like how you mentioned the systems of higher education in other countries, comparing them to the US’s. I also appreciate how you made this article more than just informative by incorporating a section on how people can prepare for the financial burden of college.

The article covered a lot of important information. I appreciated the historical perspective of the rising cost to attend college. The financial advice portion was super insightful and could be very useful for many families.

Interesting article. I think the comparison between the cost of higher education in the US and other developed countries is poignant.

I found it interesting that “developed” nations are spending less on higher education than the U.S. I don’t think a lot of people would expect that. I don’t know how far the U.S. is from catching up to other developed countries when it comes to education, but it does beg the question, “Where is all the money going?” Thank you for answering!

Applying a global comparison to modern day US higher education spending helps restore perspective on where the US and its future generations is headed relative to other countries. An interesting read and important points on the increased financial burden college makes.

There is an additional hidden cost to individuals and society as a whole. Reportedly, 40% of those who go to college never get a degree, yet are still on the hook for their loans. Often, the student was “sold a bill of goods,” so to speak, by the intense sales job colleges and high school guidance counselors subject then to. But after deciding to drop out, the student is often blamed, whereas the college not only denies any responsibility, but adds insult to injury by refusing to help in any way. The student is burdened and disempowered by the college and society as a whole. Millions of people suffer for years while national productivity is diminished and the imbalance of wealth is exacerbated.

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2024 Average College Tuition By State

2024 tuition and living costs summary by states.

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• University of Phoenix-Arizona Private, four-years | Phoenix, AZ
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Higher education accountability: Measuring costs, benefits, and financial value

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, katharine meyer katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy @katharinemeyer.

March 14, 2023

• 15 min read

Higher education has long been a vehicle for economic mobility and the primary center for workforce skill development. But alongside the recognition of the many individual and societal benefits from postsecondary education has been a growing focus on the individual and societal costs of financing higher education. In light of national conversations about growing student loan debt and repayment, there have been growing calls for improved higher education accountability and interrogating the value of different higher education programs.

The U.S. Department of Education recently requested feedback on a policy proposal to create a list of “low-financial-value” higher education programs. The Department hopes the list will highlight programs that do not provide substantial financial benefits to students relative to the costs incurred, in hopes of (1) steering students away from those programs and (2) applying pressure on institutions on the list to improve the value of those programs—either on the cost or the benefit side. Drawing on my comments to the Department, in this piece, I outline the key considerations when measuring the value of a college education, the implications of those decisions on what programs the list will flag, and how the Department’s efforts can be more effective at achieving its goals.

Why create a list of low-financial-value programs?

Ultimately, whether college will “pay off” is highly individualized, dependent on students’ earnings potential absent education, how they fund the education, and some combination of effort and luck that will determine their post-completion employment. What value does a federal list of “low-financial-value” programs provide students beyond their own knowledge of these factors?

First, it is challenging for students to evaluate the cost of college given that the “sticker price” costs colleges list rarely reflect the “net price” most students actually pay after accounting for financial aid. Many higher education institutions employ a “ high cost, high aid ” model that results in students paying wildly different prices for the same education. Colleges are supposed to provide “net price calculators” on their websites to help students estimate their actual expenses, but a recent report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found only 59% of colleges provide any net price estimate, and only 9% of colleges were accurate ly estimating net price. When students do not have accurate estimates of costs, they are vulnerable to making suboptimal enrollment decisions.

Second, it is difficult for students to estimate the benefits of postsecondary education. While on average individuals earn more as they accrue more education—with associate degree holders earning $7,800 more each year than those with a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree holders earning $21,200 more each year than those with an associate degree—that return varies substantially across fields of study within each level of education and across institutions within those fields of study. Yet students rarely have access to this program-specific information when making their enrollment decisions.

The Department has focused on developing a list of “low-financial-value” programs from an individual, monetary perspective. But it is important to note there are non-financial costs and benefits to society, as well as to individuals. There are many careers that have high value to society, but that do not typically have high wages. Higher education institutions cannot control the local labor market, and there is a risk that in response to the proposed list, institutions would simply cut “low-financial-value” programs, worsening labor shortages in some key professions. For example, wages are notoriously low in the early education sector, where labor shortages and high turnover rates have significant negative effects on student outcomes. Flagging postsecondary programs that result in slightly higher wages for their childcare graduates is less productive than policy efforts to ensure adequate pay to attract and retain those workers into this crucial profession.

HOW TO MEASURE the value of a college education?

This is not the first time the Department has proposed holding programs accountable for their graduates’ employment outcomes. The most analogous effort has been the measurement of “ gainful employment ” (GE) for career programs. As the Biden administration prepares to release a new gainful employment rule in spring 2023, elements of that effort offer a starting point for the current accountability initiative. Specifically, the proposed GE rules of using both the previously calculated debt-to-earnings ratio and setting a new “ high school equivalent ” benchmark for outcomes provide a framework for evaluating the broader set of programs and credential levels proposed under the “low-financial-value” effort.

Setting Benefits Benchmarks

The primary financial benefits of a postsecondary education are greater employment stability and higher wages. The U.S. Census Post-Secondary Employment O utcomes (PSEO) data works in partnership with states to measure both outcomes, though wage data only includes those earning above a “ minimum wage ” threshold and coverage varies across states . With those caveats, I use PSEO to examine outcomes for programs in the four states reporting data for more than 75% of graduates (Indiana, Montana, Texas, and Virginia, limiting analysis to programs with at least 40 graduates). The Department is deliberating on which benchmark to measure outcomes against, and here I examine how programs would stack up against two potential wage benefits benchmarks: 1) earning more than 225% of the federal poverty rate ( $28,710, which is similar to a $25,000 benchmark frequently proposed ); and 2) earning more than the average high school graduate ( $36,600 ). These benchmarks are compared against the median reported earnings of a program’s median graduate; those where the median graduate’s earnings fail to meet the benchmark are at risk of being labeled a “low-financial-value” program.

Many certificate programs produce low wages

As illustrated in Figure 1, while only 2.8% of all programs fail the first benchmark of 225% of the federal poverty rate, 15% of postsecondary programs fail the second benchmark against high school graduate earnings. Failure rates vary across credential levels, with certificates being most likely to produce low wages. Though nearly all bachelor’s and master’s degree programs meet both benchmarks, 3% of associate degrees, 6% of long-term certificates (one to two years) and 10% of short-term certificates (less than a year) fail to produce median earnings above 225% of the federal poverty line, and more than a third of certificate programs have median graduate earnings below that of an average high school graduate.

“As illustrated in Figure 1, while only 2.8% of all programs fail the first benchmark of 225% of the federal poverty rate, 15% of postsecondary programs fail the second benchmark against high school graduate earnings.”

That no master’s programs fail a high-school earnings benchmark is not surprising—the counterfactual for master’s program graduates is the earnings from holding a bachelor’s degree, not the earnings from a high school degree. However, calculating a “bachelor’s degree equivalent” benchmark would be challenging given wide variation in the returns to bachelor’s degrees, motivating the need to consider additional outcomes (e.g., employment) and contextualizing benefits with cost to understand the value of master’s programs.

More programs pass employment benchmarks

I next constructed a “high school equivalency” employment benchmark of more than 50% or 60% of graduates employed (in any field) five years after graduation. In Figure 2, I show that while fewer programs fail employment benchmarks than the earnings thresholds, many certificate programs see a substantial share of their graduates unemployed. About one fifth of short-term certificate programs fail to see 60% or more of their graduates employed five years after graduation.

“About one fifth of short-term certificate programs fail to see 60% or more of their graduates employed five years after graduation.”

Programs with comparatively worse earnings outcomes are not always those with worse employment outcomes. For example, about two thirds of short-term certificates in Family/Human Development programs (typically early childhood education programs) have median graduate earnings below 225% of the federal poverty level, but only 9% of those programs fail the employment benchmark, mirroring research finding many short-term certificates lead to employment stability, even if they do not result in high wages. Conversely, while virtually no master’s programs failed the earnings threshold, about 4% of master’s programs result in fewer than 50% of graduates employed.

Cost-Benefit Comparison

While graduates’ earnings and employment are important outcomes, there are many programs where graduates meet these thresholds but perhaps not enough to justify the cost of the program, hence the Department’s intent to incorporate college costs in constructing a “low-financial-value” list. The Department could measure college costs in two ways—how much students pay up front (e.g., average net price) and how much they repay over the course of their lifetime (e.g., debt repayment, or a debt-to-earnings ratio as used in gainful employment rules). Each has advantages and disadvantages. Program-level cost of attendance estimates impose additional reporting burdens on institutions and don’t include the ongoing costs of loan interest. Debt-to-earnings ratios use more easily available data (and are already used for gainful employment) but only for borrowers and require complicated amortization decisions about what repayment plans to use.

These seemingly wonky decisions could result in substantially different debt-to-earnings estimates and would result in significant differences in which schools appear on a “low-financial-value” list. While the latest proposed income-driven repayment (IDR) plan is still under construction, the use of IDR plans has increased over time —from 11% to 24% of undergraduate-only borrowers and from 6% to 39% of graduate borrowers between 2010 and 2017. Under the proposed IDR plan, many students would have zero expected monthly payments , which other scholars have flagged would also eliminate the utility of the “cohort default rate” accountability measure. Using the standard repayment plan in accountability efforts is likely still the preferred option but would result in programs being flagged for having a higher debt-to-earnings ratio than their graduates actually face given these more affordable repayment options.

Even after deciding on a repayment plan, there are important decisions to make about acceptable benchmark levels. GE rules offer two potential debt-to-income thresholdsdebt comprising 8% to 12% of graduates’ monthly income (dubbed the “warning zone”) and 12% or more of monthly income (the GE failing rate). The College Scorecard reports limited program-level earnings and debt data. Using the latest field-of-study data, I examined the share of programs with at least 40 graduates and with non-suppressed debt and earnings data that failed those thresholds. I also calculated a more lenient benchmark of debt more than 20% of monthly income (since prior GE rules measured debt and earnings on a different timeline and sample than College Scorecard).

“Notably, many graduate-level programs fail even the more lenient benchmark, with 60% of first professional degree programs leaving graduates with monthly debt payments exceeding 20% of earnings.”

Here I see a reversal in the profile of institutions feeling accountability pressure. While all bachelor’s degree programs produced median earnings above the minimal poverty benchmark (recall Figure 1), Figure 3 shows they are more likely than subbaccalaureate programs to be in the warning zone for debt-to-earnings ratios, with 17% of the programs reporting median debt that exceeds 8% of median graduate earnings. Notably, many graduate-level programs fail even the more lenient benchmark, with 60% of first professional degree programs leaving graduates with monthly debt payments exceeding 20% of earnings. First professional degrees include law, medicine, pharmaceutical science, and veterinary medicine. These programs do produce high earnings but also high debt—though there is variance even within field of study.

In Table 1, I highlight the median income and debt for the three most common professional degree programs, looking separately by whether they pass or fail a 20% debt-to-earnings ratio. There are limitations to this analysis—many programs do not have data available in the College Scorecard. However, coverage is higher for first professional degree programs and the sample for these programs is similar to the number of accredited programs in the U.S. (e.g., my data includes 156 law programs, and the American Bar Association has accredited 199 law programs).

Limitations notwithstanding, the table illustrates the different wage and debt profiles that graduates encounter even within the same fields. In law and medicine, programs that pass my lenient debt-to-earnings threshold tend to have both higher wages and lower debt, while in pharmaceutical sciences the programs that pass the threshold have both lower wages and debt. There are many law and pharmaceutical science programs that pass the threshold, while fewer medicine programs do. These graduate-level comparisons are where a “low-financial-value” list could have a significant impact on students’ decision making—students are more likely to be geographically mobile for graduate studies and should know not all programs result in similar levels of financial stability. Further, sharing the raw wage and debt data as I do in Table 1 alongside metrics such as a debt-to-earning ratio can help students better understand their investment—students accumulate substantial debt for first professional degrees, and a ratio might mask the magnitude of the underlying wage and debt figures.

To what end? Considerations for List Dissemination and Impact

The Department of Education expects the proposed list of “low-financial-value” programs will provide prospective students with insights into which programs will not “pay off” and which they should be cautious about pursuing. However, evidence from previous Department accountability efforts indicate this list is unlikely to meaningfully affect students’ enrollment decisions. One analysis of the College Affordability and Transparency Center (CATC) lists found no effect on institutional behavior or student application patterns at schools flagged for having large year-over-year increases in costs. When the Department rolled out the College Scorecard , reporting detailed college cost and anticipated earnings information through a well-designed dashboard, researchers found schools with higher reported costs did not experience any change in SAT score submissions, and while schools with higher reported graduate earnings did receive slightly more SAT score submissions, those effects were concentrated among students attending private high schools and high schools with a lower share of students receiving free/reduced price lunch. In other words, the information appeared to primarily benefit students already well positioned to navigate college enrollment decisions.

Insights from behavioral science can inform how the Department can best design and share this information with students in order to steer students to more informed postsecondary enrollment decisions:

• First, information should be proactive . Rather than hoping students will incorporate the “low-financial-value” list into their decision-making, the Department should engage in an outreach campaign to provide this information to students. For example, the Department could mail a copy of the “low-financial-value” list to anyone who files the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
• Second, information should be personalized , particularly to students’ geography. At minimum, any online display of these programs should be filterable by geography. Ideally, any Department proactive dissemination efforts would customize information by geography as well.
• Third, information should be actionable —students should know what to do with this list. If the Department has specific recommendations on how students should behave based on this information, they should make it clear.

The Department has high hopes for this accountability effort, and it is in their best interests to design and disseminate information in a way that ensures students and families can easily understand the information. If the list cannot demonstrate an impact on students’ enrollment decisions, it is unlikely that programs will respond in any meaningful way to “improve” their value.

THE CAPACITY FOR IMPACT

“There is broad bipartisan consensus that the financing of higher education is in dire need of reform.”

On the surface, measuring the costs and benefits of college may seem to be a straightforward exercise. In practice, doing so requires several nuanced decisions about what to include in that formula. This analysis suggests that a pure “high school equivalency” wage benefit would be more likely to flag credentials and associate degree programs, and that a slightly higher annual wage threshold (a difference of ~$8,000) results in a dramatic increase in the share of programs flagged—going from 3% to 24% of associate degree programs. Few prior accountability efforts have focused on employment rates and doing so would include many more bachelor’s and master’s degree programs on the list. The Department will likely look to gainful employment rules to determine a cost-benefit comparison. The GE debt-to-earnings ratio would flag a smaller share of credential programs relative to just using a high school equivalency benchmark and would flag a substantial share of graduate programs—nearly all first professional degree programs would be in the “warning zone” for typical GE rules. Regardless of the exact metrics the Department selects, if the hope is to affect student enrollment and put pressure on institutions to improve their value, the Department should carefully attend to list design and proactive dissemination.

There is broad bipartisan consensus that the financing of higher education is in dire need of reform. Accountability will necessarily play a role in those reform efforts, though it is unclear the extent to which the proposed “low-financial-value” list will provide that accountability. The devil is in the details. Seemingly small decisions about which costs and benefits to include, for whom, and over what timeline matters for the conclusions we draw about higher education outcomes. If done well, this list has the potential to provide useful information to students in a complex college enrollment decision. Researchers, higher education leaders, and legislators have provided their advice to the Department on how to execute this policy, and I am eager to see how they incorporate that advice.

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Page One Economics ®

Is college still worth the high price weighing costs and benefits of investing in human capital.

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." 

—Benjamin Franklin

Students have several options for life after high school, including enrolling in college, pursing a technical training program, starting a career, or enlisting for military service. While college has been a popular choice, college enrollment for recent high school graduates has dropped from its peak of 70% in 2009 to 61% in 2021. 1 In fact, some people are challenging the notion that college is the best route for the majority of students. A March 2023 survey found that only 42% of Americans believe college is worth the cost because it leads to better job opportunities and higher income , while 56% believe that earning a college degree is not worth the cost. That has changed a lot in 10 years: A 2013 study found that 53% believed college was a good decision, while 40% believed it wasn't. 2

Of course, attending college is an individual decision, as each person must weigh the costs and benefits of their options. While some costs of college are immediate (your tuition payments), the benefits are spread over an entire career. This article looks at the costs and benefits of a college education and explains the rate of return of going to college, viewing higher education as an investment. Economists often use the word investment to refer to spending on capital, but that does not mean just physical capital (tools and equipment); it can mean investment in human capital (education and training) too.

Costs and Benefits of Attending College 

It's true that the cost of going to college has risen significantly in recent decades. The first row of Table 1 shows the average annual tuition for colleges and universities in 1980, 2000, and 2020. The last row of the table shows how much college tuition costs in terms of 1980 dollars, showing that in real (inflation adjusted) terms, attending college cost over twice as much in 2020 as it did in 1980. 

Now, let's examine the financial benefits of going to college, which include how much more money a person with a college degree earns than someone without one; this is sometimes called the college wage premium . Figure 1 shows the annual earnings differences, adjusted for inflation, between workers with a college degree and workers with no more than a high school education.

More specifically, each line in the graph represents how much more money workers with a college degree earn in a year than those with only a high school diploma, for 1980, 2000, and 2020. For each set of data, the college wage premium starts relatively small, but it increases as workers age and acquire skills and experience. For example, in 1980 (yellow line), new college graduates earned about $1,000 more than those with only a high school diploma; but, by mid-career, college-educated workers earned about $10,000 more than high school-educated workers. In 2000 and 2020, however, you can see that the differences in income between education groups were much larger. In 2020 (green line), those with a college degree earned nearly $5,000 more after graduation; but, by mid-career, college-educated workers earned $18,000 more than high school-educated workers. Note that these numbers are adjusted for inflation (stated in 1980 dollars).

What Is the Return on Investing in a College Education?

Let's again consider the costs of a college degree. In 1980, the price paid for a college education, on average, was $13,996 (4 x $3,499). If you add up the extra income these workers received each year after graduation, the rate of return on the college tuition they initially paid is very large. For example, a White woman who invested in a college education in 1980 could expect to make back in annual income the cost of her college education plus 21.6%—all of this in addition to the income she would have made without a college degree. By 2020, this rate had risen to 22.7%. Table 2 shows the rates of return on a college education for several demographic groups in 1980, 2000, and 2020. 

Of course, there are other ways to invest money besides a college education. For example, instead of paying for four or more years of college, a person could invest money in a financial asset and go straight into the workforce. In this case, the person might have a lower wage, but invested funds and capital gains would add to their income. Although the rates of return on a college education vary greatly across time, gender, and race, they are still considered higher than the returns on financial assets, such as stocks and bonds. For example, investing in the stock market has returned about 10% per year since 1957 3 ; in 2020, returns on a college education varied from 13.5% to 35.9%. By this measure, a college degree is an excellent investment.

What Is This Calculation Missing? 

Calculating the rate of return on a college education is imperfect because it is not a tangible asset . A numerical calculation excludes certain intangible aspects that may affect the estimated rates of return on a college education. These include a person's inherent skills, employment status, and career satisfaction.

The Skill Sets Behind Higher Earnings

The rates of return shown in Table 2 were calculated from data collected on the earnings of college-educated workers. However, it is possible that college-educated workers have skills—ones they had even before attending college—that make them simultaneously better at earning high incomes and more likely to pursue a degree. The question here is are people more highly skilled because they went to college or are highly skilled people simply more likely to go to college? 4 It's difficult to tell the difference, so this may cause the rate of return on a college degree to be overestimated.

Unemployment

You can only collect income data from someone who has a job, meaning everyone accounted for in this calculation is employed. This information does not account for the fact that high school-educated workers tend to experience higher rates of unemployment. That is, if you have only a high school diploma, you are more likely to be unemployed than someone with a college education. This concept is depicted in Figure 2, which shows the unemployment rates for varying levels of education. You can see that the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to have a job. This issue could cause the rates of return on a college degree to be underestimated.

Career Satisfaction and Non-Financial Benefits

As previously stated, people attend college (or don't) for many different reasons. This article did not include any factors aside from financial ones. For example, high school-educated and college-educated workers may work different hours, work in different conditions, or face different stressors. This calculation does not account for career satisfaction, or lack thereof, that one might get from a specific type of job.

Conclusion 

Students have many options for life after high school. One of the most popular options is college. Even though college enrollment has dropped and people have a more dismal outlook on the returns on investing in a college education, the data suggest it is still one of the best investments a person can make. In fact, the advice former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke gave in 2007 still seems to ring true: "When I travel around the country, meeting with students, businesspeople, and others interested in the economy, I am occasionally asked for investment advice…. I know the answer to the question, and I will share it with you today: Education is the best investment." 5

1 The Economics Daily, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 23, 2022; https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2022/61-8-percent-of-recent-high-school-graduates-enrolled-in-college-in-october-2021.htm .

2 "Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds." Wall Street Journal , March 31, 2023; https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-are-losing-faith-in-college-education-wsj-norc-poll-finds-3a836ce1 .

3 See https://www.officialdata.org/us/stocks/s-p-500/1957?amount=100&endYear=2022/ . 

4 Wolla, Scott A. "College: Learning the Skills To Pay the Bills?" Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Page One Economics ®, December 2015; https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/page1-econ/2015/12/01/college-learning-the-skills-to-pay-the-bills/ . 

5 Bernanke, Ben S. "Education and Economic Competitiveness." Speech presented at the US Chamber Education and Workforce Summit, Washington, DC, September 24, 2007; https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20070924a.htm . 

© 2023, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.

Asset: A resource with economic value that an individual, corporation, or country owns with the expectation that it will provide future benefits.

Benefits: Things favorable to a decision­maker; rewards gained from an action/activity.

Costs: Things unfavorable to a decisionmaker.

Financial asset: A contract that states the conditions under which one party (a person or institution) promises to pay another party cash at some point in the future.

Income: The payment people receive for providing resources in the marketplace. When people work, they provide human resources (labor) and in exchange they receive income in the form of wages or salaries. People also earn income in the forms of rent, profit, and interest.

Investment: An asset purchased with the hope that it will gain value and provide a financial return.

Investment in human capital: The efforts people put forth to acquire human capital. These efforts include education, experience, and training.

Rate of return: A useful measure to compare how different assets may increase your wealth.

Real: Monetary values, wages, or prices, adjusted for inflation and measured in constant prices—that is, in prices of a given or base period. Real monetary values are obtained by adjusting nominal wages or prices with a price measure such as the CPI.

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It took me by surprise when my son initially floated the idea of not going to college. His mother and I attended undergrad together. He was an infant on campus when I was in grad school. She went on to earn a PhD.

“What do you mean by ‘not go to college’?” I pretended to ask.

My tone said: “You’re going.” (He did.)

Opinion Columnist

LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson writes about culture, politics, sports and navigating life in America.

The children of first-generation college graduates are not supposed to go backpacking across (insert destination here). They’re supposed to continue the climb — especially given that higher education was unattainable for so many for so long. The thought of not sending my son to college felt like regression for our family. In retrospect, our conversation said more about the future.

A 2023 study of nearly 6,000 human resources professionals and leaders in corporate America found only 22% required applicants to have a college degree .

Granderson: College costing nearly $100,000 a year? Forgiving loans is the least we can do

Why the resistance to canceling loans? The American mind’s shift from society to self has undermined our ability to be happy for others.

April 8, 2024

The labor shortage is one aspect of the conversation. The shift in academia’s place in society is more significant.

I’m sure that sounds like a good thing for young people joining the workforce. As an educator, my concern is what happens to a society if only the wealthy pursued higher education. Oh, that’s right: We did that already, back before there was a middle class … and paid vacations.

Though it must be said the lowering of hiring requirements isn’t the only threat to the college experience.

Academia has publicly mishandled the campus tensions and student protests that began after the Hamas attack against Israel on Oct. 7, and that certainly hasn’t been good for academia either. Neither has canceling commencement speakers … or commencement itself . Add in the rising costs — up nearly 400% in 30 years compared with 1990 rates — and, well, the college bubble hasn’t quite burst, but it’s hemorrhaging.

Granderson: Have colleges lost their way? Yes, but don’t blame ‘wokeness’

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Dec. 18, 2023

Forgiving student loan debt — whether you agree with the idea or not — addresses the past.

The future of colleges depends on the future of labor. If employers are making it easier to enter corporate America without a degree, then universities must adjust how much cash they try to extract from students and their families, because the return on investment will be falling.

College enrollment has already been declining for a decade , and it’s not because Americans have become less ambitious or less willing to invest in their children’s futures. It’s because of eroding confidence that a degree guarantees a higher quality of life.

Imagine that your high school senior is interested in going to college and wants to major in education or communication or the arts. The sticker price for tuition, even at a state school, is going to look pretty steep. If your child were headed toward a degree in engineering or business, that same tuition might feel like a better bet.

There’s no reason tuition rates couldn’t vary to reflect this reality. Colleges and universities should set tuition rates for classes based on the earning potential of the discipline studied.

If our groceries stores can figure out a way to charge us more for organic produce, then surely this great nation can devise a system to set college costs that accounts for future earnings.

For example, according to the National Education Assn., the starting salary for a teacher in California is about $55,000 , the fourth highest in the nation. For California residents, the cost to attend UCLA comes to almost $35,000 a year, without financial aid. That math just doesn’t work.

It’s easy to see why 20% of the nation’s teachers work a second job during the school year to make ends meet. Between 2020 and 2022, the nation lost about 300,000 educators , and we’re facing a teacher shortage. To address the issue, a number of states have loosened the teacher certification rules to make it easier to get more bodies in the classroom, which sounds … less than ideal.

Instead, why not lower the cost of credit hours for college students pursuing a degree in education? Wouldn’t parents feel more comfortable knowing the people in the classroom set out to teach and earned the credentials?

If colleges don’t find ways like this to lower costs for at least some students, higher education will become a relic. Just as cable cutting reshaped the economics of the TV industry, the trend of corporate America moving away from degree requirements is going to put pressure on universities to make some big changes.

There have already been tectonic shifts in a short period of time. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, colleges lost international students , who once propped up many institutions by paying higher rates than Americans.

Attendance by Americans is forecast to plummet starting next year. Because of low birth rates and low rates of immigration, the U.S. has fewer young people in the classes graduating from high school after 2025.

And perhaps most importantly, our confidence in college is slipping. In 2015, when my son graduated from high school, Gallup found nearly 60% of Americans had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in our higher education system. It was under 50% in 2018. It was under 40% last year.

No telling what that number is today.

Which is sad because there is still so much to value — beyond career choices — to a liberal arts education. Given how we live, college is one of the few places we have left in America where young people from different walks of life can meet. That’s important to the health of a nation as diverse — and segregated — as we are.

Colleges will naturally shrink because of demographics, and they can use this time to adjust their business models as well and charge fairer prices. We need young people to be able to replenish all career fields, and that includes art and music and education. It’s time to rethink the economic approach so they aren’t saddled with debt that those careers can’t repay.

@LZGranderson

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LZ Granderson is an Opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He arrived in 2019 as The Times’ sports and culture columnist. Granderson is also a political contributor for ABC News. A fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago as well as the Hechinger Institute at Columbia University, the Emmy award winner appears regularly on The Times’ Spectrum News 1’s daily news magazine program, “L.A. Times Today.” Granderson joined CNN as a political contributor and columnist in 2009 before joining ABC in 2015. He spent 17 years at ESPN in a variety of roles, including NBA editor for ESPN The Magazine, senior writer for Page 2 and co-host of TV’s “SportsNation.” In 2011, Granderson was named Journalist of the Year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn., and his columns have been recognized by the National Assn. of Black Journalists as well as the Online News Assn. His podcast for ABC News, “Life Out Loud with LZ Granderson,” has won numerous honors, including a GLAAD award. His TED Talk on LGBTQ equality has more than 1.7 million views.

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Here's how much money Boone County school districts may lose if a charter school opens

Columbia Public Schools could lose up to $13.3 million if just one charter school opens in Boone County based on financial analysis, said district spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark.

"When considering all six impacted districts, it's well above $13 million," Baumstark wrote in an email, referring to all the Boone County school districts.

Awaiting governor's signature

Charter schools are independent public school districts.

With the Omnibus Education Bill awaiting the signature of Gov. Mike Parson, the possibility of a charter school is looking more and more likely, despite opposition from educators and education officials.

The Columbia delegation of the Missouri House of Representatives sent a letter last week to the governor, appealing to him to veto the bill.

"Senate Bill 727 jettisons the voice of the local taxpayer and changes the funding formula for each charter school opening in Boone County," Baumstark said, referring to the legislation by its bill number. "Abandoning the obligation for equitable state funding,  Senate Bill 727  requires the school districts of Boone County to absorb the entire funding impact of financial aid to a charter school."

Rural districts

The financial effect on rural Boone County districts may be more marked, Baumstark wrote.

"The school districts in Boone County experience a tremendous range in student size and local revenue," Baumstark said. "The opening of a charter school and the depletion of state and local funds from some of these rural districts would have a devastating effect on their continued ability to operate and/or operate at the level local taxpayers expect based on their investment."

The charter schools won't have the same level of accountability to the public, Baumstark wrote.

"Charter schools have no oversight by elected officials," Baumstark said. "Charter schools should not be permitted to handle millions in taxpayer dollars with no accountability. Charter school legislation would allow for the expansion of charter schools without a vote by local school boards. Voters made a choice to elect the school board and have also voted to approve levies and bonds to fund our public schools. By circumventing the authority of a locally elected board, the legislature is negating the choice voters made. "

Making hard choices

Linda Quinley, a former chief financial officer in CPS , now is senior director of school finance for the Missouri School Boards Association, where she has done a detailed financial analysis of how charter schools affect other public schools.

She also has worked as CFO at Kansas City Public Schools.

"My personal experience at KCPS was that we worked hard to keep neighborhood schools open while slowing losing students to charters," Quinley wrote in an email. "That became difficult, so choices had to made.  Choices such as close a neighborhood school or reduce offerings/services to students in all buildings. Neighborhood schools are loved by and valuable to their community and alumnae, so offerings to students were reduced over time. That resulted in virtually no fine arts in elementary schools and limited fine arts in middle schools. Limited foreign language offerings and high-level math and science as well as limited extra-curriculars for students were a common theme."

The teacher shortage will become more extreme if a charter school opens in Boone County, Quinley wrote.

Several Boone County Districts have gone to four-day weeks as a way to recruit teachers.

"The most important and challenging fiscal issue in Boone County should charters open will be the impact on teachers and leaders for school buildings," Quinley wrote. "We are already in a teacher crisis, and this will add to the number of needed FTE for teachers, principals, even leaders/superintendents. Where will they come from? Will they be appropriately accredited? Will students be served at the level they deserve? Will CPS be able to continue the good strides they have made on teacher compensation? Will charters be able to afford to match CPS in compensation?"

FTE is education shorthand for full-time equivalent employees. For example, two half-time employees is one FTE.

More: Columbia school board 'deeply concerned' about Missouri charter school legislation

Accountability, just different

There's no reason for the us-versus-them dichotomy put forward by charter school opponents, said Noah Devine, executive director of the Missouri Charter Public School Association .

He made the point that the legislation had advocates, including State Sen. Caleb Rowden, R-Coumbia , and State Rep. Cheri Reisch, R-Hallsville.

Reisch's advocacy for charter schools stemmed from her repeated unfounded claims that CPS students, identifying as animals, use litterboxes to go the restroom.

The taxpayer money should follow the taxpayers wherever they want to send their children, Devine said.

"Who does the money belong to?" Devine asked. "It's taxpayers. Public school money is taxpayer money."

If Boone County parents don't want a charter school, it won't open, Devine said.

"I attended Ridgeway," a CPS elementary school with enrollment from throughout the district, Devine said. "I love CPS. I want CPS to continue to be a great school district."

Accountability for charter schools looks different, Devine acknowledged.

If a charter school fails, it closes, he said.

"Charter schools can and do close," he said.

Charter schools have annual performance reports and students take the same Missouri Assessment Program exams, Devine said.

Every charter school every five years must justify its existence to the State Board of Education, he said.

"It's accountable, just in a different way," Devine said.

CPS could sponsor a charter school, he said.

"It would be an interesting conversation," he said.

Not everything is known yet about how a charter school might affect Boone County school districts, Quinley said.

"We speak of the fiscal impact as it is significant," Quinley wrote. "The greater challenge is really about the students while a change in available resources will impact students. Probably not right out of the gate, but over time."

Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at [email protected] or 573-815-1719. He's on X at @rmckinney9.

The New York Sun

Biden’s student debt cancellation will cost more than all federal spending on higher education in history.

Recent student loan forgiveness plans will cost an estimated $870 billion to $1.4 trillion, a watchdog group says.

President Biden’s student loan debt cancellation will cost more than the federal government has spent on higher education in the entire country’s history, a stunning report says.

Including Mr. Biden’s latest loan forgiveness plans, the student debt cancellation policies will cost $870 billion to $1.4 trillion, a fiscal watchdog group, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, estimates. The soaring costs are mostly a result of Mr. Biden’s executive actions, the group notes, which he is pursuing despite an earlier attempt being blocked by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Biden first announced his latest plan during a speech in Wisconsin earlier this month, and he was promptly met with lawsuits from a slew of Republican states. 

In a proposal the Education Secretary says will create an “America that lives up to its highest ideals,” the Biden administration recently unveiled details of its plan to cancel the debt of more than 25 million borrowers, forgive debts of millions of borrowers who entered repayment more than two decades ago, and eliminate debt for students who attended schools that  “failed to provide sufficient value,” as the Sun reported .

The Education Department is also working on a plan to authorize loan forgiveness for borrowers who are at a “high risk of future default” or those facing financial hardships such as medical expenses. 

Those new proposals will cost $250 to $750 billion, the watchdog group estimates, on top of the $620 billion in debt cancellation already implemented. 

The total $870 billion to $1.4 trillion cost estimate is more than “all historic spending on higher education prior to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the report notes, as federal spending from 1962 to 2019 was $744 billion.

The loan forgiveness plans will also cost more than all projected education appropriations over the next decade and more than the total cost of tripling the current Pell grant program. The loan forgiveness also is more expensive than “the federal cost of offering universal pre-K and universal affordable child care.”

Most of the policies have “not only been costly, but also inflationary, poorly targeted, counter to the mission of lowering college costs, and not financially justified,” the report notes. “Instead of continuing down this road, lawmakers should work together on reforms that actually fix the student loan program and address the cost and quality of higher education.”

Ms. Hroncich is from Pittsburgh and a graduate of Hillsdale College. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Federalist, and The Daily Signal.

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The Campus-Left Occupation That Broke Higher Education

Elite colleges are now reaping the consequences of promoting a pedagogy that trashed the postwar ideal of the liberal university.

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F ifty-six years ago this week, at the height of the Vietnam War, Columbia University students occupied half a dozen campus buildings and made two principal demands of the university: stop funding military research, and cancel plans to build a gym in a nearby Black neighborhood. After a week of futile negotiations, Columbia called in New York City police to clear the occupation.

The physical details of that crisis were much rougher than anything happening today. The students barricaded doors and ransacked President Grayson Kirk’s office. “Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up,” Mark Rudd, the student leader and future member of the terrorist organization Weather Underground, wrote in an open letter to Kirk, who resigned a few months later. The cops arrested more than 700 students and injured at least 100, while one of their own was permanently disabled by a student.

In other ways, the current crisis brings a strong sense of déjà vu: the chants, the teach-ins, the nonnegotiable demands, the self-conscious building of separate communities, the revolutionary costumes, the embrace of oppressed identities by elite students, the tactic of escalating to incite a reaction that mobilizes a critical mass of students. It’s as if campus-protest politics has been stuck in an era of prolonged stagnation since the late 1960s. Why can’t students imagine doing it some other way?

Perhaps because the structure of protest reflects the nature of universities. They make good targets because of their abiding vulnerability: They can’t deal with coercion, including nonviolent disobedience. Either they overreact, giving the protesters a new cause and more allies (this happened in 1968, and again last week at Columbia), or they yield, giving the protesters a victory and inviting the next round of disruption. This is why Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, no matter what she does, finds herself hammered from the right by Republican politicians and from the left by her own faculty and students, unable to move without losing more ground. Her detractors know that they have her trapped by their willingness to make coercive demands: Do what we say or else we’ll destroy you and your university. They aren’t interested in a debate.

Michael Powell: The unreality of Columbia’s ‘liberated zone’

A university isn’t a state —it can’t simply impose its rules with force. It’s a special kind of community whose legitimacy depends on mutual recognition in a spirit of reason, openness, and tolerance. At the heart of this spirit is free speech, which means more than just chanting, but free speech can’t thrive in an atmosphere of constant harassment. When one faction or another violates this spirit, the whole university is weakened as if stricken with an illness. The sociologist Daniel Bell, who tried and failed to mediate a peaceful end to the Columbia occupation, wrote afterward:

In a community one cannot regain authority simply by asserting it, or by using force to suppress dissidents. Authority in this case is like respect. One can only earn the authority—the loyalty of one’s students—by going in and arguing with them, by engaging in full debate and, when the merits of proposed change are recognized, taking the necessary steps quickly enough to be convincing.

The crackdown at Columbia in 1968 was so harsh that a backlash on the part of faculty and the public obliged the university to accept the students’ demands: a loss, then a win. The war in Vietnam ground on for years before it ended and history vindicated the protesters: another loss, another win. But the really important consequence of the 1968 revolt took decades to emerge. We’re seeing it now on Columbia’s quad and the campuses of elite universities around the country. The most lasting victory of the ’68ers was an intellectual one. The idea underlying their protests wasn’t just to stop the war or end injustice in America. Its aim was the university itself—the liberal university of the postwar years, which no longer exists.

That university claimed a special role in democratic society. A few weeks after the 1968 takeover, the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter gave the commencement address to a wounded institution. “A university is a community, but it is a community of a special kind,” Hofstadter said—“a community devoted to inquiry. It exists so that its members may inquire into truths of all sorts. Its presence marks our commitment to the idea that somewhere in society there must be an organization in which anything can be studied or questioned—not merely safe and established things but difficult and inflammatory things, the most troublesome questions of politics and war, of sex and morals, of property and national loyalty.” This mission rendered the community fragile, dependent on the self-restraint of its members.

The lofty claims of the liberal university exposed it to charges of all kinds of hypocrisy, not least its entanglement with the American war machine. The Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who became a guru to the New Left, coined the phrase repressive tolerance for the veil that hid liberal society’s mechanisms of violence and injustice. In this scheme, no institution, including the university, remained neutral, and radical students embraced their status as an oppressed group.

Charles Sykes: The new rules of political journalism

At Stanford (where my father was an administrator in the late ’60s, and where students took over a campus building the week after the Columbia revolt), white students compared themselves to Black American slaves. To them, the university was not a community dedicated to independent inquiry but a nexus of competing interest groups where power, not ideas, ruled. They rejected the very possibility of a disinterested pursuit of truth. In an imaginary dialogue between a student and a professor, a member of the Stanford chapter of Students for a Democratic Society wrote: “Rights and privacy and these kinds of freedom are irrelevant—you old guys got to get it through your heads that to fight the whole corrupt System POWER is the only answer.”

A long, intricate , but essentially unbroken line connects that rejection of the liberal university in 1968 to the orthodoxy on elite campuses today. The students of the ’68 revolt became professors—the German activist Rudi Dutschke called this strategy the “long march through the institutions”—bringing their revisionist thinking back to the universities they’d tried to upend. One leader of the Columbia takeover returned to chair the School of the Arts film program. “The ideas of one generation become the instincts of the next,” D. H. Lawrence wrote. Ideas born in the ’60s, subsequently refined and complicated by critical theory, postcolonial studies, and identity politics, are now so pervasive and unquestioned that they’ve become the instincts of students who are occupying their campuses today. Group identity assigns your place in a hierarchy of oppression. Between oppressor and oppressed, no room exists for complexity or ambiguity. Universal values such as free speech and individual equality only privilege the powerful. Words are violence. There’s nothing to debate.

The post-liberal university is defined by a combination of moneymaking and activism. Perhaps the biggest difference between 1968 and 2024 is that the ideas of a radical vanguard are now the instincts of entire universities—administrators, faculty, students. They’re enshrined in reading lists and codes of conduct and ubiquitous clichés. Last week an editorial in the Daily Spectator , the Columbia student newspaper, highlighted the irony of a university frantically trying to extricate itself from the implications of its own dogmas: “Why is the same university that capitalizes on the legacy of Edward Said and enshrines The Wretched of the Earth into its Core Curriculum so scared to speak about decolonization in practice?”

A Columbia student, writing to one of his professors in a letter that the student shared with me, explained the dynamic so sharply that it’s worth quoting him at length:

I think [the protests] do speak to a certain failing on Columbia’s part, but it’s a failing that’s much more widespread and further upstream. That is, I think universities have essentially stopped minding the store, stopped engaging in any kind of debate or even conversation with the ideologies which have slowly crept in to every bit of university life, without enough people of good conscience brave enough to question all the orthodoxies. So if you come to Columbia believing in “decolonization” or what have you, it’s genuinely not clear to me that you will ever have to reflect on this belief. And after all this, one day the university wakes up to these protests, panics under scrutiny, and calls the cops on students who are practicing exactly what they’ve been taught to do from the second they walked through those gates as freshmen.

The muscle of independent thinking and open debate, the ability to earn authority that Daniel Bell described as essential to a university’s survival, has long since atrophied. So when, after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Jewish students found themselves subjected to the kind of hostile atmosphere that, if directed at any other minority group, would have brought down high-level rebukes, online cancellations, and maybe administrative punishments, they fell back on the obvious defense available under the new orthodoxy. They said that they felt “unsafe.” They accused pro-Palestinian students of anti-Semitism—sometimes fairly, sometimes not. They asked for protections that other groups already enjoyed. Who could blame them? They were doing what their leaders and teachers had instructed them was the right, the only, way to respond to a hurt.

Adam Serwer: The Republicans who want American carnage

And when the shrewd and unscrupulous Representative Elise Stefanik demanded of the presidents of Harvard and Penn whether calls for genocide violated their universities’ code of conduct, they had no good way to answer. If they said yes, they would have faced the obvious comeback: “Why has no one been punished?” So they said that it depended on the “context,” which was technically correct but sounded so hopelessly legalistic that it led to the loss of their jobs. The response also made nonsense of their careers as censors of unpopular speech. Shafik, of Columbia, having watched her colleagues’ debacle, told the congresswoman what she wanted to hear, then backed it up by calling the cops onto campus—only to find herself denounced on all sides, including by Senator Tom Cotton, who demanded that President Joe Biden deploy the United States military to Columbia, and by her own faculty senate, which threatened a vote of censure.

T he right always knows how to exploit the excesses of the left. It happened in 1968, when the campus takeovers and the street battles between anti-war activists and cops at the Democratic convention in Chicago helped elect Richard Nixon. Republican politicians are already exploiting the chaos on campuses. This summer, the Democrats will gather again in Chicago, and the activists are promising a big show. Donald Trump will be watching.

Elite universities are caught in a trap of their own making, one that has been a long time coming. They’ve trained pro-Palestinian students to believe that, on the oppressor-oppressed axis, Jews are white and therefore dominant, not “marginalized,” while Israel is a settler-colonialist state and therefore illegitimate. They’ve trained pro-Israel students to believe that unwelcome and even offensive speech makes them so unsafe that they should stay away from campus. What the universities haven’t done is train their students to talk with one another.

Eastham's 2024 Town Meeting warrant calls for education, police staffing overrides

Editor's note: A previous version of this story gave the incorrect date for Eastham's town meeting . Town meeting is May 4 at the Nauset Regional High School athletic field.

Eastham ’s fiscal 2025 budget of $44,180,055 will be put before voters on May 4 at town meeting whose warrant is light on articles (eight) but heavy on override requests.  

The operating budget, Article 2A, requires a Proposition 2 ½ override of $1,020,000 because of increases in the forecasted school budget, student enrollment and special education costs, according to Nauset Regional School Committee Chairman Chris Easley. About $600,000 of that amount can be attributed to enrollment increases and $335,000 is due to special education costs.  

To fund the increases, an override request will be on the town election ballot. Should the override not pass, the town’s municipal budget will have to be cut $1,020,000.

If the article and ballot question pass, tax rates would increase by about 20 cents, or $150 on a median valued home of $747,000.  

Article 2D calls for $300,000, and another Proposition 2 ½ override to fund the hiring two additional police officers. It would be the first police department staffing increase in 30 years.

Should the override and ballot question pass, the tax rate would increase an additional six cents and result in an increase in property taxes of about $44 for the median valued home.

Eastham proposal would limit ownership of short-term rentals

Two articles proposing zoning bylaw changes are being introduced as a means of protecting the town’s year-round housing stock.  

Article 5B proposes limiting the number of short-term rentals owned by one property owner to two units. Those who already have certificates for more than two units can keep them until the property changes ownership or the certificate expires.  

Article 7A would prohibit timeshare, interval and fractional ownership of properties.

Community Preservation articles would fund a Brewster housing project, upgrades to Finch Skate Park and Eastham Elementary School’s playground, an addition at the Old Schoolhouse Museum , extension of the Sandy Meadow ADA accessible trail, and the historic preservation of a structure on Massasoit Road.

The Finance Committee voted to recommend approval on all the warrant articles, though not all approvals were unanimous. 

What is a town meeting?

A town meeting is both an event and an entity, according to the Secretary of the Commonwealth's website. As an event, it is a gathering of a town’s eligible voters, and is referred to as “the town meeting.” As an entity, it is the legislative body for towns in Massachusetts, and is referred to simply as “town meeting.” Thirteen of the 15 Cape Cod towns including Eastham have “ open town meetings,” meaning all voters who live in that town may vote on all matters.

Where is the Eastham town meeting?

Eastham’s town meeting is at 10 a.m. at the Nauset Regional High School athletic field, 100 Cable Road. 

Where you can find the warrant

For warrant information, go to Town Meeting | Eastham, MA (eastham-ma.gov)  

  Denise Coffey writes about business, tourism and issues impacting the Cape’s residents and visitors. Contact her at [email protected] .    

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