Sanity-check question here. If a student attends School X from 2016 to 2020, the tuition due each year can change, right? It’s not frozen for that student at the figure where it was on their first day in Fall 2016, is it?
In a hypothetical (unrealistic) case where a school raised their tuition by $5K per year, the student or family could be on the hook for $30K more, total, than if they multiplied the first year’s tuition by 4. How do you plan for something like that before choosing? Is there a place to view the history of tuition increases for a given school?
I know $5K/year is very high, but I just saw that a school on my daughter’s list raised their tuition more than $2K from 2014-15 to 2015-16. If that happened every year it would be $12-15K more than originally planned based on 4x the freshman tuition - that’s not chump change.
I know some schools freeze tuition at freshman levels for a total of 8 semesters. This does not seem to be the prevalent case, though. Merit scholarships do not seem to increase along with tuition increases. I share your concern.
Some schools do freeze tuition, and some schools increase the merit awards to match a tuition increase. Both of my kids found schools that do NOT freeze tuition and did not increase the merit aid. Lucky me.
The good news is it wasn’t $5000 but more like $1000-2000. The Stafford loan increase will cover the difference for a $1000 increase. There is also hope that an internship job will cover more in the later years (student can earn more).
One school changed the structure of the merit award, and those 2015 freshman get a lot more money for the same statistics that a 2014 freshman had, and yet the sophomores, juniors and seniors still pay the same tuition. I find that unfair.
This is exactly why we are really hoping S’s first choice offers full tuition. His second choice has automatic tuition +room, which is even better. If tuition and room/board increase by 500 or even 1000 per year that could really raise the cost. And some of us have siblings starting on top of that!
I know Ohio University just started the Ohio Promise this year. It promises to hold tuition, room and board at the same level for 4 years. It is something to consider especially when the Tuition is extremely expensive to begin with.
That does sound unfair, @twoinanddone And yet sometimes things work in the opposite direction, where a door that was open to today’s enrollees has been closed to tomorrow’s freshmen - GPA or test score cutoffs for scholarships were raised, or a school’s automatic merit aid became competitive. One of those “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you” situations.
You recognize that it’s a possibility, and factor a reasonable annual increase into the projected COA for the post-freshman years.
For the schools that you are interested in, you can ask how much their costs have increased on an annual basis over, say, the last ten years. You might also ask if there is an institutional policy regarding the size of cost increases each year.
Tuition and fees information is included in each school’s common data sets. We went through past common data sets for the schools D14 was considering to see how much tuition had increased over the last several years and used that to help us guesstimate future increases. Her scholarship does not increase with tuition. Tuition increased four percent freshman to sophomore year.
Two of our three state universities have a tuition guarantee for incoming freshmen that keeps their tuition the same for four years.
The norm actually is for tuition to increase year over year. The 10 year average for tuition increases at all 4 year colleges is something like 8% which is a mind boggling number when compounded over 10 years. I’m not aware of a good reference for a particular college. I am publishing a book on college admissions and part of the research was in-depth data on tuition. I had to update with 2015/2016 data before publishing so I was able to see the delta this year. For private colleges the increase ranged from nothing to as much as $4,000. There are some colleges that lock in tuition but that is not very common
In a hypothetical (unrealistic) case where a school raised their tuition by $5K per year, the student or family could be on the hook for $30K more, total, than if they multiplied the first year’s tuition by 4. How do you plan for something like that before choosing? Is there a place to view the history of tuition increases for a given school?
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Most schools do NOT freeze tuition (or room or board or fees)…so all can increase each year.
Not only that, but the prices you’re seeing RIGHT NOW, are the prices for current freshman. They’re not the prices that your high school senior will be paying next fall.
So, if you have a high school senior now, the current prices for tuition, room, board, and fees that you’re seeing will likely increase 4 times. If your child is a high school junior, the prices will likely increase 5 times.
That’s why if your child gets a set merit scholarship amount, say $10k per year…it may seem like it almost disappears half-way thru college when all the costs have increased.
It’s better to find merit that increases with tuition increases…or anticipate that costs will increase and be extra conservative when figuring the affordable net cost for frosh year.
My daughters received need-based aid from their colleges. Tuition and room and board went up each year. What we owed varied from year to year but it seemed to be based more on extrinsic factors (our family income and number of children in college) than on the increases in the COA. Both schools said they would cover as much of the increased COA as they could with increased grants.
Also something I didn’t know is that if you come in with credits (AP, IB, dual-enroll), then if there is a threshold for higher tuition, you’ll hit it sooner and have to pay “junior tuition” as a sophomore or, like one of my HS friends, a second-semester freshman. PLUS the overall tuition goes up.
I know at our large state universities a big deal is made about a 5-6% increase, being public funds and all, and I don’t think it’s every year (or I haven’t been paying enough attention). And of course, that’s 5-6% of a $10-12K base for in-state, so it’s like $500-700.
If the mean is 8% then that means some schools are feeling free to do 10%+. Per year. On a base of $40-50K. Or they’re padding their residence hall and meal plan costs to make them profit centers. I don’t know where it stops.
I guess I’m feeling cynical and not in control right now.
I cringe when someone I know in real life has budgeted so close to the bone for their kid’s Freshman year that anything unexpected- kid needs an appendectomy so a parent wants to fly out (or drive out, but needs a hotel room) is going to upset the budget. I try to tactfully mention that costs go up each year- even a modest increase is an increase after all- and parents go nuclear (like I’m being Debbie Downer).
OP- you are smart to go into this with both eyes open. Don’t overestimate the things that are within your control (like travel- every kid does not need to come home at Thanksgiving, for example, when flights are expensive and the ancillary expenses like transportation to the airport can add up quickly) but make sure you are being realistic about the costs that are not in your control- tuition usually goes up. Meal plan costs typically go down after Freshman year once your kid settles into a routine, but unless your kid already knows how to cook, will be close to groceries and has access to a kitchen AND is motivated- the reduction in meal plan costs gets offset by more “eating out” and purchasing snack foods.
Oh, nice. I never knew about that, @bodangles . Fun enough that we get dinged on need-based aid for conscientiously saving in a 529 account all these years, but taking AP courses and getting college credit for them can actually cost money? In addition to the $95 per exam. Cooool.
How common is it for schools to have tiered tuition by class? I assumed it was the same for all undergrads in a given year. I’m not sure I’ve run across that anywhere.
Ugh. I was hoping to be able to stay out of the common data sets. But it looks like we’d better do a regression analysis on the tuition history for each school that we’re seriously considering.
Yup, I’m sure not all schools have it, and maybe Penn State is even in the minority. But it’s a policy here (something about more advanced classes requiring more expensive equipment, or something?), and it would probably be worth checking for that policy at any schools to which someone is applying. It’s just something to be aware of, so you can make an informed decision about using your AP credits or not using your AP credits. I didn’t know it was a thing before I got the inflated rate.
Michigan also charges more for more advanced students.
More advanced students do cost more, since more instructors are needed for the smaller class sizes, and instructors are not as interchangeable for more advanced topics. There may be specialized lab or other equipment as well.
Well, if you use your AP classes for credits, then you aren’t really paying more if you can graduate early. Think of it as getting your freshman first semester for free (or the $90 test fee) If you can’t use them, don’t apply for credit for them.
You can get an idea of how much the tuition has gone up in the past few years through the common data sets, but there is no guarantee that the school won’t have a big ‘correction’ year. I agree with blossom that some people try to figure it out exactly and there are so many expenses that you just don’t see coming that you might get knocked off budget even in the first year. Also, when we were looking at the cost, as mentioned above, it was for the prior year so when the first bill came in July, it was a few thousand more than I expected (tuition and room and board had both risen a LOT). Surprise!
While the tuition costs can rise in the later years, often other expenses go down. The r&b for one daughter is very expensive, and while she’s living in the dorm sophomore year (my decision; many kids do get a waiver), for junior and senior year that amount might even be half of what we’ve been paying (meal plan for sophomores was a lot less too). She’s got quite a network of upper division friends who have been giving her books. We’re a lot better at booking airfare to save on travel. We’ve found some scholarships to apply for for upper classmen.
At first this school seemed way to expensive for us, but I’m very glad we didn’t let the sticker price scare us off.