College tuition bills may spike, officials warn
A new report shows the price of attending college rose 5% this fall, but some fear next fall's costs will be sharply higher.
A College Board report released today showed that the average price of attending college rose more than 5% this fall, but education officials warned that the current economic crisis might cause sharply higher tuition bills next year.
Annual tuition, fees, room and board for in-state students at four-year public colleges and universities increased 5.7% for this school year, to a national average of $14,333, and rose 5.6%, to $34,132, at four-year private schools, according to the Trends in College Pricing survey. Financial aid cut those bills in many cases.
Those increases were close to the 5.6% climb in the national Consumer Price Index in the fiscal year ending July 2008 and were relatively moderate compared to a run-up of costs a decade ago. "This is certainly not high by historical standards," said Sandy Baum, a College Board analyst and economics professor at Skidmore College in New York.
But some officials said there may be trouble ahead. State budget cuts, drops in college endowments' stock market investments and a possible falloff in donations may lead to much larger charges for students and parents next year, they warned. On the other hand, some experts speculated that schools may be loathe to hike prices at a time when many American families face layoffs, home foreclosures and shrinking investments.
Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, said she was worried about a possible cycle of spiking tuition at both private and public colleges. "I am afraid this year's [College Board] report may prove only to be a snapshot of a time in history that we might soon be referring to as 'the good old days,' " she said in a prepared statement. Given the economic strains and endowment losses, college administrators "will be reluctant to increase tuition, but they will likely have little choice."
Baum of the College Board said she could not make any predictions but conceded that campuses are feeling financial strains. "Obviously, the pressure is going to be very strong on colleges and universities as it is going to be on the rest of the economy," she told reporters in a telephone press conference Wednesday.
At the National Assn. of Independent Colleges and Universities, spokesman Tony Pals noted that Benedictine University in Illinois recently froze tuition at the current level through spring 2010 and guaranteed that next year's freshman class will not see a hike through 2011 because of the financial problems many families face. Some other private schools may follow that example, Pals said, and others will work to limit hikes.
