This is the usual time to find out what next year’s COA will be for colleges. I was wondering if anyone is seeing big jumps in cost? I remember (was it a couple years ago?) when Case Western’s COA jumped up a lot.
I know when covid hit, a lot of schools seemed to freeze cost increases or it was smaller than usual, but wondering if that will/has changed in the inflationary environment we are in.
Purdue’s announcement typically comes the first week of December. With Mitch Daniels retiring December 1, I suspect the 11 year freeze will come to an end.
State university tuition increases are more likely and more likely to be larger when state government tax revenue falls in economic downturns, lowering the amount available for state university subsidies (competing with other state government budget items).
I recently updated our spreadsheet for estimated costs for the schools where our son has applied. CWRU is the only one that made me say “huh?”
They are at $61,548 for next year’s tuition and fees. Last year was $56,720. That’s an increase of more than 8% after several years of pretty big increases. Here’s a plot from an article in the school paper.
Our family wages have stagnated for years and have definitely not kept pace with inflation. Not even close. Meanwhile, our property tax has more than doubled (increased by 170%) in the same time period as this plot. We are going to downsize our home as soon as our youngest goes to college. We have enough equity to buy a much smaller home outright. We have really struggled to keep up with inflation and we’re just sick of being stretched. I’d like to retire at some point, after all.
I have seen articles that indicate that many colleges are trying to minimize increases. However, there will be many that do not. Overall, I believe that the majority of colleges understand the need to keep costs from spiraling, but whether or not they can succeed in convincing their boards that it’s necessary (and identify alternative revenue streams) is another story.
It’s important, by the way, to separate cost of tuition/fees from cost of attendance. With inflation, the other components will rise even if tuition rises more slowly or is capped.
Oh yeah, Case has also increased room and board by quite a bit too. I was shocked to see that they are now the most expensive school on our son’s list, both in the category of tuition, and for room and board. Case’s dorms are kind of notoriously bad (freshman, at least).
Syracuse has a reputation for being very pricey and Case has them beat now.
I suspect CWRU is bringing their tuition in line with their increasing selectivity and yield protection over the last several years. They do still seem to be generous with financial aid, but yeesh. Maybe the increasing costs are part of a larger campaign to increase their prestige overall. Their info sessions were almost devoid of actual helpful information, and seemed focused on selling people on how impressive the school is. My kid was super frustrated by that but still liked the school.
Will be interesting to see how this goes, and if other schools do similar or different things.
U of Dayton has taken the approach of making everything totally transparent and basically guaranteeing your costs over the 4 years of study. That is a HUGE bonus for us and our son is very attracted by that.
“Maybe the increasing costs are part of a larger campaign to increase their prestige overall.” That wouldn’t surprise me.
Interestingly in the case of CWRU, they had a large price increase in 2020 to R/B (it cost $20k that year) and have been lowering the R/B charges since. The R/B charges for this upcoming year will be $17k.
At the same time, they’ve been lowering R/B, they’ve been increasing tuition. From $56k in 2020, to $61k in 2023. So dropping R/B by $3k and increasing tuition by $5k.
Feels a bit like re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic in terms of how CWRU is managing COA…but I am curious as to whether this is CWRU specific or if other schools are also having these pricing perambulations (or just straight up increases tied to inflationary environment that are above and beyond the expected price increases).
ETA: I think the book LowerEd by Dr. McMillan Cottom discusses in some depth the severing of price from quality of higher education. Basically, almost all schools increased their prices once they realized that for many prospective students/families higher price seemed to indicate higher quality (regardless of who was charging high prices). Which is one of the reasons prices for all type of higher education soared, especially for online/distance learning.
ETA2: I think my tuition #s are inaccurate but they are the ones showing on the website. Sorry, the tuition graph shown above is accurate which makes the increases even more notable $52k in 2020, to $61k in 2023.
Interesting to look at CWRU as it was one of S18’s admits with merit aid (of $28K per year) 5 years ago. We budgeted for 4% annual increases and they were almost exactly in line with that figure. It was interesting to compare with GWU (with fairly similar merit) which promised to keep tuition and fees constant once you start.
But UCLA which he chose to attend actually reduced their instate tuition and fees slightly over the four years he was there rather than increasing them (and gave him additional scholarships), so he spent much less than we had budgeted. Like others I’ll be interested to see what happens to tuition when the CA state budget melts down next year.
Purdue already announced no increase for room and board for '23-24 school year but I haven’t heard anything yet about tuition.
Here, utility costs are increasing a lot. Our electric bill is slated to increase by a whopping 40%. No that’s not a typo. Colleges have huge consumptions of utilities even if they have their own power generation. Many here have solar arrays. But the costs are getting higher and higher. Likely a contributing factor to RB increases.
I’ll be curious how much board increases. We’ve already seen huge increases where points aren’t going as far as expected so I’ll be curious if the plans see big jumps next year.
Depends on the school. Texas A&M will actually be lowering rates for certain majors 2023-2024 after freezing all tuition rates in 2022-2023.
Regarding Dayton, tuition may be locked in but housing cost is not, as far as I understand it. Most students live in Dayton’s housing all four years and if you compare R&B costs across schools, Dayton’s are quite high (by far the highest among my D23’s list of schools, by about $2500, and about $4K higher than the average of her schools).
I think schools find a way.
One thing to remember is many (most?) UD students do not purchase a full meal plan for years 3 and 4. By the third year, most students living on campus reside in dorms with kitchens. My son is a Junior at UD, and lives in an on-campus apartment with one roommate and they have a bathroom, living room and full (but small) kitchen. While his housing cost increased a little this year, his dining plan dropped 80%.
Yes, I now spend more helping him buy groceries, but it’s not nearly as much as the food plan was. So the net result is a decrease in overall Room+Board costs in years 3+4.
Good to know, thank you!
