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College Tuition
About This Indicator
What Is This?
The price of college tuition and fees compared with prices overall: the Consumer Price Index for tuition divided by the index for everything consumers buy, both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and adjusted for the seasons. Above 100, tuition has risen faster than other prices since 1982 to 1984. Since 2003 the tuition index subtracts grants and scholarships but not loans, and it leaves out room, board, and textbooks.
Why Does It Matter?
It measures how much of a family's buying power a year of college takes, the question behind deciding whether to borrow or where to enroll. Over the long run tuition has outrun prices overall, partly because a lecture takes as much teaching time as ever while factories make more with fewer workers.
Can Politics Influence It?
States fund public universities, and their boards or legislatures set tuition. Tuition tends to jump just after a recession, as cash-short states cut their college budgets, so the same slump that shrinks a family's income can raise its college bill. Federal grants and loans change what students can pay.
Key Idea
A rising sticker price is not the same as college getting dearer. When tuition rises only as fast as everything else, a year of college takes the same bite from a family's budget as before; this line moves only when college pulls ahead of other prices or falls behind them.
Scored: A Faster Fall or Slower Rise Ranks Better
Source: BLS. CUSR0000SEEB01 (college tuition and fees) over CUSR0000SA0 (all items).
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