There’s been a fair amount of ink spilled and pixels expended in the last week about college enrollment and tuition. The College Board sparked the latest round of tuition talk with the release of its annual reports on tuition and financial aid earlier this week. As has been widely reported, tuition and fees at public baccalaureate colleges and universities are up 6.5 percent over last year, and at independent colleges the increase is 4.4 percent.
That jibes with what the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities found in a survey of its membership earlier this year, which put the average tuition increase at private colleges at 4.3 percent, the smallest in 37 years. Independent colleges boosted their financial aid budgets by nine percent, according to the survey.
In Washington we topped those numbers. Public baccalaureate institutions in the state are hiking tuition by 14 percent this year and next. The 10 members if Independent Colleges of Washington, on the other hand, raised tuition and fees 4.9 percent, on average. They also boosted their financial aid budgets by 10.2 percent. In all, ICW members will give more than $245 million of institutional financial aid to students this year. Ninety percent of students receive aid.
It’s important to keep that commitment to financial aid in mind. NAICU points out a fact from the College Board report that isn’t getting much coverage: inflation-adjusted net tuition—the true price students pay after financial aid—has actually dropped by 8.6 percent at independent colleges over the last five years.
Amid all of this, enrollment looks pretty good this fall. The Associated Press reported last week that, despite the sharp tuition increases, lots of students turned up for classes at the public institutions. ICW members’ enrollment rose by a little over 2.5 percent, which is a bit higher than their typical growth of one to two percent. Interestingly, there was a boomlet in transfer students, which are up 7.7 percent. Clearly, the institutions’ commitment to financial aid, and good investments in grant aid from the state and federal governments, have helped keep a rigorous independent higher education affordable for everyone.
