This study may be interesting from a public policy perspective, but not super helpful to someone building a college list. Your own in-state public schools, almost regardless of the state, are likely to have some of the lowest available sticker prices (for YOU). But once you factor in financial aid, the cost picture could change dramatically.
Are they comparing/contrasting the instate/OOS costs? Otherwise the numbers would be of little utility.
If you scroll to the bottom of the CC article mentioned in the first post, there’s a link to the site with the full report. Scroll all the way to to bottom and you’ll find a breakdown of how they calculate net price. There’s also a chart showing where all the other states sit in relation to cost.
Something to note is that all the data is from 2016-2017, the most recent year when data was available. So while the general rankings may still be accurate, of course all these figures are a few years out of date, and I’d hazard a guess costs have since gone up and not the other way. 
@Goggleson - more scrolling than this new format already requires?? AAAGGGHHH!!!
Net price after financial aid grants and scholarships (presumably for in-state students).
Based on the chart at the bottom of the heytutor.com page, Vermont has the third highest average net price for in-state students ($18,590.85), lowest education appropriations ($3,043), and highest percentage of university revenue from tuition (87%). But it also has a well known politician calling for “free public college”…
The explanation on the bottom of the heytutor.com page says that net price is calculated by subtracting average grant and scholarship aid from the total cost of attendance. It does not say how commuter students (whose live-at-home and commuting costs are typically lower than resident students’ room and board costs) are accounted for (not all universities publish commuter budgets in addition to resident budgets).
If commuter students’ lower costs are not accounted for, then the average net price as calculated may be pessimistic for states where a high percentage of the state population lives within commuting range of a full-range state university, particularly a state flagship or similar university that is admission-accessible to most (e.g. Arizona and Hawaii).
I did scroll to the end. There are only 31 states listed. It does say they take the average of all 4 year public schools AFTER state and federal aid. This number is less than useful especially because they don’t say if they took an average at that school and then averaged all the schools together or did it by size of the school. If they counted CU-Boulder as ‘1’ and then counted Western State as ‘1’, that’s not very accurate as CU has almost 28k undergrads and Western has 2k (and is much cheaper).
CAN you go to a school in Colorado for $18k average price? Sure, but it won’t be CU.
Averaging across a state is a poor way to do this. It says nothing of what it really costs to attend a university in any state.
^ Flagships might have significantly higher net costs than satellites or the secondary state system. It depends on the state. They also might have significantly higher quality faculty and facilities.
Also, does that article mention time to degree completion? This can vary both within-state and across states. A low-net-cost option might not truly be as low cost as it appears if the average time to degree completion for your major is higher than it would have been at the “higher-cost” state flagship. And it’s not just kids flaking out - you can be delayed for all sorts of reasons including difficulty getting your courses in sequence, scaling back on course load in order to hit a GPA threshold, opting to change your major, crappy advising, over-crowding, and on and on. Generally, the “higher-cost” the option, the less these problems tend to exist. One of my kids was considering CSU’s and one of the Florida state universities (the latter giving her scholarship money to offset the OOS premium) for her art/design degree, and it was just understood that you were at all of them for over four years, even with AP’s coming in to offset some of the generals. The technical requirements and level of competition made it very hard to get out in four years, so we budgeted in five when comparing costs to other places, including public flagships - one of which had a four-year guarantee.
Time to degree completion is heavily dependent on the strength of students. Non-flagship publics tend to have academically weaker students than flagships, and also have those from poorer backgrounds who need to work to afford school (and therefore have to take lighter course loads).
There are some college treatment effects on time to degree completion, but it is not as obviously as just looking at average time to degree without considering the context of the students the college gets. See https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/01/author-discusses-his-book-college-dropout-scandal for example.
CSUs commonly have California Promise programs promising four year bachelor’s degree completion for students who fulfill requirements like taking full course loads, following their major’s course plan, not need remedial courses, etc…
Spot on. These figures represent an average of an average—the average of average net cost at all public universities in a given state. This information might be useful if you’re lobbying the legislature to increase appropriations for higher education, but if you’re trying to decide whether any particular institution is affordable for your kid, it tells you approximately zero.
Public universities within a state can have widely differing COAs and widely differing FA policies, with some meeting full need and others not, some offering generous merit awards and others not, varying cut-offs for both need-based and merit awards, varying mixes of grants and loans in need-based awards, and so on. The best way to predict whether any particular school is in your price range is to use that school’s net price calculator—and even then, you won’t be certain until you have the actual FA award in hand.
“CSUs commonly have California Promise programs promising four year bachelor’s degree completion for students who fulfill requirements like taking full course loads, following their major’s course plan, not need remedial courses, etc…”
- This might vary by particular degree. Some - such as a BFA program - might have a competitive portfolio requirement at the end of first or 2nd year. Not passing portfolio isn't the same thing is flunking out of drawing 101. You are up against some pretty top talent for a limited number of slots. It's an extra hurdle not only at CSU's but other public schools of art, and it can totally vary by state institution (or state system) even within the same state.
“There are some college treatment effects on time to degree completion, but it is not as obviously as just looking at average time to degree without considering the context of the students the college gets. See https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/01/author-discusses-his-book-college-dropout-scandal for example.”
- Would not look at "average time" but would discuss with the particular school or department of interest. For instance, the School of Engineering likely gets students with different skill sets than the College of Art and Design, so it's best to understand how long it takes the chemical or electrical or mechanical engineering majors to graduate, on average. Then you are holding skill set constant to your area of interest. Or if you are exploring a BA in CS vs. a BS - those two degrees alone might tend to have different completion times, as the former allows more free choice of electives while the latter can be more technical and sub-specialized. So if you were admitted to XYZ State for a BS, but State U (Flagship) for a BA in the same subject, you'd want to explore how the varying degree requirements might impact time to completion.
Another piece of advice: Some state universities are going to make it easier to pick up a minor or even another major in the four years than others . . . a lot depends on how their majors are organized and what the admission rules are (direct admit vs. general admission to the university). That also impacts time to completion.
But the skill set of other students in the major may not necessarily be the same as your particular student. For example, a student with 4.0 HS GPA in hard courses and 36 ACT and does not have affordability problems is likely to finish in four, whether at a highly selective college or at a much less selective college that has much lower graduation rates (overall and in the same major).
But a student who barely got into a reach school where his/her academic record is on the lower end of other students and who is under financial stress has a higher risk of delayed or non graduation than the overall rates or rates for his/her major.
Yes, if there is a secondary admission process to enter or stay in the major, that needs to be considered. This seems to be fairly common in engineering at Midwestern state flagships, for example.
@ucbalumnus, totally agree that someone with a 36 ACT/4.0 is simply not going to encounter the number of obstacles that an academically struggling college student will encounter. However, the vast majority of students - and hence most reading this post - will fall in between these two tails.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about - not to pick on one state system; this is just one that clearly comes to mind which is Engineering at IA State vs. University of Iowa. ISU happens to be ranked higher for engineering (overall) and is also a good $10,000 cheaper per year for a full-pay out-of-stater. So this seems like a no-brainer, right? And if you are a top performing applicant, it might not be. Furthermore, if you require a lot of remediation or are woefully unprepared in the math and sciences, you would likely wash out in either program and either switch your major or transfer out altogether. However, if you are somewhere in between - as are the majority of students attending these two schools, it’s not so clear. In the absence of actual published graduation rates for the engineering program of either school, there are attributes of both that we can examine to figure whether one might have a longer time to graduation than the other:
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Size: ISU admits a larger number of first years overall by about 25% so it’s a larger school. In the Colleges of Engineering specifically, ISU enrolls over a quarter of its total undergraduate population, while Iowa enrolls fewer than 10%. Engineering being what it is these days, that indicates it’s easier to declare an engineering major at ISU than at Iowa.
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Admissions Index: Iowa has direct entry to Engineering with a higher admissions index than its other academic programs. ISU, on the other hand, is open entry; all are welcome but a smaller group makes it through to the end.
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Overall graduation rates: Despite having similar six-year grad rates, ISU graduates a smaller percentage of their class in UNDER that time than does Iowa (47% vs. 53%, respectively). ACT scores and percentage of Pell recipients are similar between the two, and ISU actually has a BETTER overall grad rate on its Pells than does Iowa. So something other than financial stress is driving down the four-year completion rate.
Anyway, none of those factors alone signals a definite time-to-graduation difference for the average student. But it would be worth looking into, simply because ISU’s engineering program might take in a large number of hopefuls and weed them out along the way. Those students will either switch majors or transfer out, and both possibilities will increase time to completion. For those who make it through, they are not in a particularly selective program to begin with for the first couple years of their college. But they ARE competing against oodles of others both for advising and classroom slots. That also tends to increase time to completion. So it would be something to ask about, if we had kids who wanted to do engineering at one of the Iowa state schools.
This suggests that UI admits only stronger students to engineering, relative to ISU. So it is not too surprising that ISU may have lower graduation rates among engineering majors. On the other hand, a student who gets admitted to both UI and ISU (i.e. meeting the higher UI admission standard) may not necessarily have any different chance of 4/5/6-year graduation (assuming cost is not different enough to cause more financial stress at one versus the other).
Or “give everyone a chance in admissions, but realize that some significant percentage of the academically weaker ones will not succeed”. In terms of “weeding”, that could be “natural weeding” based on the rigor of the curriculum, as opposed to “intentional weeding”, where capacity limitations force the school to implement rationing of the major, where a high college GPA or competitive admission is needed to declare or stay in the major (e.g. like at Wisconsin, where some engineering majors require a 3.5 technical and 3.0 overall college GPA to stay in the major), even though many of those rejected from the major would likely have been successful if allowed to enter or continue in the major.
I love it, basically it says if you pass all your classes take a full load, don’t deviate from your plan. you will graduate in four years……………….well, lets hope so! Seems like a bank saying that if you pay your mortgage they won’t foreclose on you.
The schools give students who sign up for the program and fulfill the conditions priority registration.
“This suggests that UI admits only stronger students to engineering, relative to ISU. So it is not too surprising that ISU may have lower graduation rates among engineering majors. On the other hand, a student who gets admitted to both UI and ISU (i.e. meeting the higher UI admission standard) may not necessarily have any different chance of 4/5/6-year graduation (assuming cost is not different enough to cause more financial stress at one versus the other).”
- Agree. That would be one way to figure out whether you have a reasonable chance of succeeding at ISU academically. But you are still competing for resources with a whole lot of other engineering students and that fact does tend to be associated with a longer time to graduation. Smaller, more selective degree programs just run better than large, less selective ones.
“Or “give everyone a chance in admissions, but realize that some significant percentage of the academically weaker ones will not succeed”. In terms of “weeding”, that could be “natural weeding” based on the rigor of the curriculum, as opposed to “intentional weeding”, where capacity limitations force the school to implement rationing of the major, where a high college GPA or competitive admission is needed to declare or stay in the major (e.g. like at Wisconsin, where some engineering majors require a 3.5 technical and 3.0 overall college GPA to stay in the major), even though many of those rejected from the major would likely have been successful if allowed to enter or continue in the major.”
- Yep. Allowing a more natural attrition clearly will help some students who can succeed eventually through hard work. Suspect that's why ISU runs the way it does.
When I decided to move out of NYC. The cost of college is one of the things I took in consideration before deciding on what state to move to. My children were in elementary at the time. I can see how information like this could be useful for that reason. I don’t it’s meant to be used for people in the middle of the college search.