As the sticker price of attending colleges and universities has steadily increased over the past decade, researchers and policymakers have begun to focus on the actual price that students and their families face. The federal government collects a measure of the net price of attendance in its IPEDS database, which is calculated as the total cost of attendance (tuition, fees, room and board, and other expenses) less any grant aid received. (More information can be found on the IPEDS website.) I have used the net price measure in my prior work, including the Washington Monthly rankings and my previous post on the Net Price Madness tournament. However, the data do have substantial limitations—some of which could be easily addressed in the data collection process.
There are two different net price measures currently available in the IPEDS dataset—one for all students receiving grant aid (federal, state, and/or institutional) and one for students receiving any federal financial aid (grants, loans, or work-study). The average net price is available for the first measure, while the second measure breaks down the net price by family income (but does not report an average net price.) For public institutions, both of these measures only include first-time, full-time, degree-seeking students paying in-state tuition, which can substantially limit the generalizability of the results.
Here, I use my current institution (the University of Wisconsin-Madison) as an example. The starting sample for IPEDS is the 3,487 first-time, full-time, degree-seeking freshmen who are in-state students. Of those students, net price by family income is calculated for the 1,983 students receiving Title IV aid. (This suggests that just over half of in-state Madison freshmen file the FAFSA.) Here are the net price and number of students by income group:
0-30k: $6,363 (n=212)
30-48k: $10,098 (n=232)
48-75k: $15,286 (n=406)
75-110k: $19,482 (n=542)
110+k: $20,442 (n=591)
The average net price is calculated for a slightly different group of students—those who received grant aid for any source (n=1,858). The average net price is $14,940, which is lower than the average net price faced by students who file the FAFSA ($16,409) as some students who do not receive institutional grants are included in the latter measure. However, the latter number is not reported in the main IPEDS dataset and can only be calculated by digging into the institutional reports.
I would encourage IPEDS to add the average net price for all FAFSA filers into the dataset, as that better reflects what students from financially modest backgrounds will pay. Additionally, to counter the relatively small number of students who may have a family income of less than $30,000 and to tie into policy discussions, I would like to see the average net price for all Pell Grant recipients. These changes can easily be made given current data collection procedures and would provide more useful data to stakeholders.
Robert Kelchen 