Tag: student fees

Post-Pandemic Trends in Student Fees at Public Universities

Amid everything going on in the world of higher education right now, it is easy to forget that this is the time of year that students and families are trying to figure out whether they can afford to attend college. This is when I typically get a bunch of questions from journalists across the country about the extent to which college is affordable, and I do my best to provide helpful information.

I have written about student fees at public universities in the past, and the topic is the source of several questions in the last few weeks. In response to that, I updated my work to examine the most up-to-date data available on trends in student fees at public universities that include a look at what has happened since the pandemic. I did this using data on 499 public universities from the 2011-12 through the 2023-24 academic years, excluding about two dozen institutions (including all of Massachusetts) that “reset” fees by shifting most of their fees into tuition at some point during the period. The data for this analysis can be downloaded here.

Overall, tuition went up by 37% between fall 2011 and fall 2023, while fees went up by 40%. This is slightly higher than the 35% overall rate of inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index) over this same period. It also marks a change from the 2000s, in which fees went up substantially more than tuition. The growth in tuition and fees slowed considerably around the pandemic, which reflects an increase in the number of tuition freezes during the period and difficulties increasing fees while many students were studying remotely.

But in fall 2023, fees increased more quickly than tuition. The question is whether that becomes a trend—and whether that will be able to be studied using federal data. It would be possible to continue this analysis by collecting data from institutional websites or fact books, but it would also require a number of assumptions about how to handle the complicated structures of differential tuition by field of study and number of credits taken.

Trends in Student Fees at Public Universities

Out of all the research I have done during my time as an assistant professor, I get more questions from journalists and policymakers about my research on student fees than any other study. In this study (published in the Review of Higher Education in 2016), I showed trends in student fees at public four-year institutions and also examined the institutional-level and state-level factors associated with higher levels of fees. Yet due to the time it takes to write a paper and eventually get it published, the newest data on fees in the paper came from the 2012-13 academic year. In this blog post, I update the data on trends in fees at public universities for in-state students to go through the 2016-17 academic year.

It’s quite a bit harder than it appears to show trends in student fees because of the presence of fee rollbacks—colleges resetting their fees to a lower level and increasing tuition to compensate. Between the 2000-01 and 2016-17 academic years, 89 public universities reset their fees at least once (as measured by decreasing fees by at least $500 and increasing tuition by a larger amount). This includes most public universities in California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and South Dakota, as well as a smattering of institutions in other states. Universities that reset their fees had a 115.3% increase in inflation-adjusted tuition and fees since 2000-01 (from $4,286 to $9,228), compared to an 83.7% increase for the 441 universities that did not reset their fees (from $4,936 to $9,068). With the caveat that I can’t break down consistent increases in tuition and fees for some of the colleges with the largest price increases, I present trends in tuition and fees for the other 441 institutions below.

The first figure shows average tuition (dashed) and fees (solid) levels for each year through 2000-01 through 2016-17. During this period, tuition increased from $3,999 to $7,183 in inflation-adjusted dollars (a 79.6% increase). Fees went up even faster, with a 106.7% increase from $912 to $1,885.

The second figure shows student fees as a percentage of overall tuition and fees. This percentage increased from 18.6% in 2000-01 to 20.8% in 2016-17.

This increase in fees is particularly important in conversations about free public college. Many of the policy proposals for free public higher education (such as the Excelsior Scholarship in New York) only cover tuition—and thus give states an incentive to encourage colleges to increase their fees while holding the line on tuition. It’s also unclear whether students and their families look at fees in the college search process in the same way they look at tuition, meaning that growing fee levels could surprise students when the first bills come due. More research needs to be done on how students and their families perceive fees.

The Challenges Facing New York’s Tuition-Free College Program

Although tuition-free public college will not become a federal policy anytime soon, more states and local communities are considering different variations of free college. There are nearly 200 active college promise or free college programs in the United States, with two states (Arkansas and New York) enacting tuition-free programs in recent weeks.

New York’s Excelsior Scholarship program has garnered quite a bit of attention because it covers students at four-year colleges (most larger programs are limited to less-expensive two-year colleges), because of the conditions attached, and because New York governor Andrew Cuomo is likely to run for president in 2020. Yet the ambitious program (the legislation text starts on page 142 of this .pdf) also has to overcome a number of challenges in order to be truly effective. I discuss three of the key challenges with this program below.

Challenge 1: Will scholarship funds be available to all qualified students? The budget includes $163 million in funding for the program, which is probably far below the amount of money needed to fund all students. Judith Scott-Clayton of Teachers College estimated that an earlier version of the program could cost about $482 million per year. Even requirements that students complete 30 credits per year and clawbacks for students who leave the state after graduation (more on that later) may not bring the cost down enough—particularly if the program is successful in increasing enrollment at public colleges. The budget has a provision that allows awards to be cut or allocated via lottery if funds run short, which is a distinct possibility if the state faces another recession. Needless to say, this would be a PR nightmare for the state.

Challenge 2: Will colleges use fees as a tuition substitute? A full-tuition scholarship sounds great, but students and their families often forget about fees. Right now, fees are a sizable portion of direct educational prices. For example, at SUNY-Albany, tuition is $6,470 and fees are $2,793, while Hostos Community College charges $4,800 in tuition per year for a full-time student alongside $406 in fees. Since the scholarship only covers tuition, the state may pressure colleges to increase fees in an effort to reduce program costs. This happened in Massachusetts for years and still happens in Georgia, both states with large merit-based grant aid programs. Over time, it is quite possible that the value of the grant fails to keep up with inflation as a result—particularly if the state shifts funding from appropriations to student aid and colleges scramble for another revenue source.

Challenge 3: Will the state be able to manage a large “groan” program? Perhaps the most controversial portion of New York’s program is the requirement that students must live and work in the state after college for the same number of years that they received the grant; if they fail to do so, the grant converts to a loan (also known as a “groan” to financial aid wonks). Many people have raised concerns about the fairness of this idea, but here I’ll touch on the logistics of the program. Can the state of New York track students after graduation and see where they both live and work? Will they feel pressures to exempt students who live out of state but work in New York and pay state income taxes? What will the terms of the converted loans look like? There are a lot of unanswered questions here, but it is clear that the state must invest in a larger student loan agency in order to manage this complex of a program.

As Governor Cuomo prepares for a likely presidential bid in 2020, he is counting on the tuition-free college proposal to be one of his signature policy ideas. Some of the biggest concerns with this legislation may take years to develop, but even a period of two or three years may be enough to see whether the program can work effectively around some of the significant concerns noted here.

Which Factors Affect Student Fees?

Tuition increases tend to get the most focus in discussions about college affordability, but a number of other factors also affect the total price tag of a college education. In addition to researching living allowances for off-campus students, I have looked into the often-confusing world of student fees at public colleges. These fees are used for a variety of purposes, such as supporting core instructional activities, funding athletics, paying for student activities, or even seismic safety. The University of California-Santa Cruz lists over 30 mandatory fees that all undergraduates must pay, ranging from $.75 per year to fund a marine discovery center to $1,020 per year for student services. At the typical four-year public college, student fees were nearly $1,300 in the 2012-13 academic year, roughly 20% of median tuition and nearly double their 1999-2000 rate after adjusting for inflation.

In a new article that was just published in The Review of Higher Education, I used a panel regression framework to explore potential institution-level and state-level factors affecting student fee levels between the 2001-02 and 2012-13 academic years.  For institution-level factors, I included tuition, the percent of nonresident students, measures of selectivity, and per-student athletics expenditures (a proxy for the magnitude of a college’s athletics program). For state-level factors, I considered appropriations and financial aid levels, economic conditions, whether a tuition or fee cap was in place, who had the ability to set tuition or fees (politicians, state or system boards, or the individual college), and partisan political control in the state.

Given that students subsidized athletics at public colleges to the tune of at least $10 billion over five years, I fully expected to find that higher per-student athletics expenditures would be associated with higher student fees. Yet after controlling for other factors, there was no significant relationship between athletics spending and fees. This could be explained by the small number of high-spending colleges in big-time conferences that come close to breaking even on athletics, or it could be due to my data ending in 2012-13 and larger increases in athletics fees occurring since then. The only significant institution-level factor was tuition—as tuition rose, fees fell. This implies that some colleges likely treat tuition and fees as interchangeable.

More of the state-level factors have statistically significant relationships with student fee levels. States that have capped fee levels do have fees about $128 lower than states without fee caps, but I also found evidence that colleges in states with tuition caps have fees $59 higher. This suggests that colleges will substitute fees for tuition where possible. If a state’s governor and/or legislature can set tuition, fees tend to be lower, but if policymakers can set fees, fees tend to be higher. Finally, partisan political control only has a small relationship with fees, as having a Republican governor is associated with slightly lower fee levels and control of the legislature was not significant.

Given the magnitude of student fees and the relatively small body of research in this area, I hope to see more studies (particularly qualitative in nature) digging into how student fees are set and how the money is supposed to be used compared to its actual uses.

Why I’m Conflicted About College Athletics

As a college professor doing research in higher education finance and accountability policy, there are many times when my enjoyment of college athletics leaves me conflicted. I enjoy watching my beloved Wisconsin Badgers get the best of (most of) their Big Ten opponents on a regular basis, but I also recognize that at all but the few dozen wealthiest universities, college athletics are heavily subsidized by student fees. (Answering whether athletics programs are actually profitable is very difficult due to concerns with cost allocations, assumptions about whether students are induced to attend because of athletics, and how revenue is disbursed.)

In the past year, colleges in the “Power Five” athletic conferences (Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast, Pacific-12, and Southeastern Conferences) gained additional autonomy from the rest of the NCAA. They then voted to increase athletic scholarships by $2,000-$4,000 per year per athlete to cover the full cost of attendance, which is definitely a good thing for those athletes. Other Division I colleges can choose to also increase scholarships, but not without significant budgetary implications. For a college with 250 scholarship athletes (not an unrealistic number for a college with football), the cost could approach one million dollars per year. My concern is that those increases are likely to be funded out of the pockets of students and/or by cutting non-revenue sports like wrestling and track and field.

Other things that college athletic programs do are unambiguously bad for athletes. A recent example of this is with national letters of intent, which bind athletes to a college at the end of the recruiting process. Earlier this month, prized linebacker recruit Roquan Smith made news by accepting a football scholarship from the University of Georgia (switching from UCLA) without signing the letter of intent. Once a letter is signed, a student cannot transfer without losing eligibility unless the college decides to let the student out. In the meantime, coaches often leave for other jobs without facing any employment restrictions.

As a professor, I also worry about the increased number of televised weeknight games long distances from campus that cause athletes difficulties attending class. It’s great to get exposure for your college on national television (and get serious television dollars), but this places a burden on athletes and faculty who work with those students. But if I’m not teaching one evening and a good game is on, will I watch it? Quite possibly. Should I? No.

I’m curious to get readers’ thoughts about how they manage the pros and cons of big-time college athletics. Even when the game is going on, I can’t help think about the students and the dollar signs behind them.

[NOTE: A previous version of the post incorrectly noted that Mr. Smith was intending to enroll at UCLA instead of the University of Georgia. Thanks to Ed Kilgore for pointing out this error.]

Do States and Colleges Affect Student Fees?

I am presenting a paper, “A Longitudinal Analysis of Student Fees: The Roles of States and Institutions,” at the Association for Education Finance and Policy’s annual conference today.  Here is the abstract:

Student fees are used to finance a growing number of services and programs at colleges and universities, including core academic functions, and make up 20% of the total cost of tuition and fees at the typical four-year public college. Yet little research has been conducted to examine state-level and institutional-level factors that may affect student fee charges. In this paper, I use state-level data on tuition and fee policy, the role of state governments and higher education systems, and partisan political balance combined with institutional-level data on athletics programs and selectivity to create a panel from the 1999-2000 to 2011-12 academic years. I find that some state-level factors that would be expected to reduce student fees, such as fee caps, do reduce fees at four-year public colleges, but giving the legislature authority to set fees results in higher fees. Additional state grant aid and higher-level athletics programs are also associated with higher fees in my primary model.

And here are the slides from my presentation, summarizing the study (which is still a work in progress). Any comments are greatly appreciated!

Come See Me at AEFP!

I’m presenting two papers at the annual conference of the Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) this week in San Antonio. Below are short descriptions of the papers that I’ll be presenting, along with information about the time and room location.

“Are Federal Allocations for Campus-Based Financial Aid Programs Equitable and Effective?” (Thursday at 2:45 PM, Conference Room 4, Third Floor)

Abstract: Two federal campus-based financial aid programs, the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG) and the Federal Work-Study program (FWS), combine to provide nearly $2 billion in funding to students with financial need. However, the allocation formulas have changed little since 1965, resulting in community colleges and newer institutions getting much smaller awards than longstanding private colleges with high costs of attendance. I document the trends in campus-level allocations over the past two decades and explore several different methods to reallocate funds based on current financial need while limiting the influence of high-tuition colleges. I show that allocation formulas that count a modest amount of tuition toward financial need reallocate aid away from private nonprofit colleges and toward public colleges and universities.

“A Longitudinal Analysis of Student Fees: The Roles of States and Institutions” (Saturday at 9:45 AM, Conference Room 12, Third Floor)

Abstract: Student fees are used to finance a growing number of services and programs at colleges and universities, including core academic functions, and make up 20% of the total cost of tuition and fees at the typical four-year public college. Yet little research has been conducted to examine state-level and institutional-level factors that may affect student fee charges. In this paper, I use state-level data on tuition and fee policy, the role of state governments and higher education systems, and partisan political balance combined with institutional-level data on athletics programs and selectivity to create a panel from the 1999-2000 to 2011-12 academic years. I find that some state-level factors that would be expected to reduce student fees, such as fee caps, do reduce fees at four-year public colleges, but giving the legislature authority to set fees results in higher fees. Additional state grant aid and higher-level athletics programs are also associated with higher fees in my primary model.

I welcome any feedback you may have on either of these papers, as they are both preliminary works that still need polishing at the very least. I hope to see you at AEFP!