The article excerpted below nicely summarizes a recent federal report that addresses the claim of many higher education leaders that net tuition and fees are the best measure of the price of attending college. That's a logical assertion, but what the report makes clear is that even net price is increasing on the average at a rate in excess of the rate of inflation.
Net Price vs. Sticker Price
Doug Lederman. Inside Higher Ed, November 29,2005
For several years, some experts on college financial aid have sought to change the conversation about college prices, arguing that sky-is-falling rhetoric about skyrocketing tuition exaggerates the extent of the problem. To understand the real pain for students and families, they have argued, “net price” (what colleges charge students to attend minus the amount of financial aid the students receive) provides a clearer picture of what a higher education actually costs — and tends to make the situation look less dire. The argument can seem self-serving when it comes from college officials themselves. But a report released Monday by the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics generally endorses the view that policy makers should use net prices, not just sticker prices, in assessing students’ higher education costs — and shows that the median net price paid by first-time freshmen from 1999 to 2002 rose at a significantly slower pace than did the median price of attendance for students at all types of institutions. But that doesn’t mean celebration is in order: Even the increases in net prices outpaced inflation during that period, and the picture for students is likely to have worsened in the last few years because the amount of available grant aid has grown at a slower pace than it had previously. Read more ...
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