Examining Trends in Living Allowances for College

The National Center for Education Statistics released a new report and data on trends in the cost of attendance for different types of colleges, including data from the 2012-13 to 2014-15 academic years. The report shows that, among colleges operating on a traditional academic year basis (excluding most vocationally-oriented colleges), tuition and fees generally increased at a rate faster than inflation among public and private nonprofit colleges over the last two years. However, tuition failed to keep up with inflation in the for-profit sector and allowances for other living expenses (such as transportation and laundry) declined over the past two years after taking inflation into account.

I dug deeper into the data, looking at the percentage of colleges by sector that increased, decreased, or held constant each of the cost of attendance components (tuition/fees, room and board, books and supplies, and other living expenses) between 2013-14 and 2014-15—without adjusting for inflation. I focused on students living off-campus without their family, as colleges have the ability to determine the room and board allowance but do not directly receive any housing revenue for off-campus students. (My blog post on the topic last year ended up connecting me to Braden Hosch at Stony Brook and Sara Goldrick-Rab at Wisconsin-Madison, and we’ve dug deeper into the accuracy and consistency of these estimates in a working paper.)

The results (below) show that for-profit colleges were far more likely to lower tuition and fees than public or private nonprofit colleges. While 75% of public colleges and 85% of private nonprofits increased tuition, just 42% of for-profit colleges did so. For-profits were also more likely to lower books/supplies and other living expense allowances, although the typical allowance was still higher than for nonprofit colleges. A majority of colleges across sectors increased room and board, while most colleges did not change their allowances for books and supplies.

Yet as was noted in last year’s blog post on this topic, some colleges set room and board allowances that are unreasonably low by any standard. This year, I focused on the 27 colleges that reduced their room and board allowance for off-campus students by at least $3,000 between 2013-14 and 2014-15. Some of the changes may be reasonable, such as Thomas University’s drop from $15,200 to $10,530 for nine months of room and board. But many others are unlikely to meet any standard of reasonableness. For example, Emory & Henry College in Virginia reduced its allowance from $11,800 for nine months to just $3,000, while the College of DuPage in Illinois cut its allowance from $8,257 to $2,462. Good luck trying to rent an apartment and eating ramen on that budget!

Why do some colleges feel pressures to cut back living allowances? It’s all about accountability. The amount of loan dollars students can borrow is limited by the cost of attendance, meaning that reducing living allowances (and hence the cost of attendance) reduces borrowing—and potentially the risk of a college facing sanctions for high student loan default rates. The cost of attendance also determines the net price (the COA after grants are applied), an important accountability metric. Since colleges don’t directly benefit financially from a higher off-campus living allowance, they have an incentive to reduce the living allowance while continuing to increase tuition.

Author: Robert

I am an a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who studies higher education finance, accountability policies and practices, and student financial aid. All opinions expressed here are my own. View all posts by Robert