Changes in College Costs Over Time

Fresh from the 2013 Digest of Education Statistics comes one of the most popular tables: Average College Costs over Time, showing lots of stuff, including what I've visualized here: Average Tuition, Room, Board, and Required Fees for four-year, public and private colleges and universities in the US since 1969.

But before I begin, a caveat: Don't use this data to try to figure out how much you or your student is going to pay at any particular college. Don't tell me the averages are too low. This is NCES Data, and it's not always exactly what it's made out to be. For instance, it seems that the growth in for-profit institutions has skewed the private costs low; I'd prefer to show only four-year, not-for-profit private universities, but that data does not go back quite as far, and I thought the longer trend was more interesting. For reference, using just not-for-profits in 2012 would bump the average shown from $35,074 to $39,302. Adjust accordingly.

Still, there is some interesting stuff, not the least of which is the trends from 1969 to about 1981 for private institutions. Up until then, tuition increases largely followed inflation. Note the rapid split after that date; the same thing happens at public institutions about ten years later.

Also, notice that the rate of increase at publics has increased in recent years, having caught up to privates and surpassed them (of course, a larger increase on a smaller base is still, in this case, a smaller number.)

What else do you see?

Learn About Tableau

Comments

Changes in AP Scores, 2022 to 2024

Used to be, with a little work, you could download very detailed data on AP results from the College Board website: For every state, and for every course, you could see performance by ethnicity. And, if you wanted to dig really deep, you could break out details by private and public schools, and by grade level. I used to publish the data every couple of years. Those days are gone. The transparency The College Board touts as a value seems to have its limits, and I understand this to some extent: Racists loved to twist the data using single-factor analysis, and that's not good for a company who is trying to make business inroads with under-represented communities as they cloak their pursuit of revenue as an altruistic push toward access. They still publish data, but as I wrote about in my last post , it's far less detailed; what's more, what is easily accessible is fairly sterile, and what's more detailed seems to be structured in a way that suggests the company doesn...

Educational Attainment and the Presidential Elections

I've been fascinated for a while by the connection between political leanings and education: The correlation is so strong that I once suggested that perhaps Republicans were so anti-education because, in general, places with a higher percentage of bachelor's degree recipients were more likely to vote for Democrats. The 2024 presidential election puzzled a lot of us in higher education, and perhaps these charts will show you why: We work and probably hang around mostly people with college degrees (or higher). Our perception is limited. With the 2024 election data just out , I thought I'd take a look at the last three elections and see if the pattern I noticed in 2016 and 2020 held. Spoiler: It did, mostly. Before you dive into this, a couple of tips: Alaska's data is always reported in a funky way, so just ignore it here. It's a small state (in population, that is) and it's very red. It doesn't change the overall trends even if I could figure out how to c...

Changes in SAT Scores after Test-optional

One of the intended consequences of test-optional admission policies at some institutions prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was to raise test scores reported to US News and World Report. It's rare that you would see a proponent of test-optional admission like me admit that, but to deny it would be foolish. Because I worked at DePaul, which was an early adopter of the approach (at least among large universities), I fielded a lot of calls from colleagues who were considering it, some of whom were explicit in their reasons for doing so. One person I spoke to came right out at the start of the call: She was only calling, she said, because her provost wanted to know how much they could raise scores if they went test-optional. If I sensed or heard that motivation, I advised people against it. In those days, the vast majority of students took standardized admission tests like the SAT or ACT, but the percentage of students applying without tests was still relatively small; the ne...

Higher Ed Data Stories

Search This Blog