College Tuition Is on Sale!

This year, the Ivy Leagues increased tuition by an average of over 4%. Vanderbilt-- home of the $100,000 annual cost of attendance-- increased tuition by 4.5%, after last year's whopping 9.9% bump. Stanford's charges also went up by 4%. Meanwhile, the average tuition costs students pay has declined, net of inflation, over the past decade. How is it possible that tuition went up while it also went down? That's tuition discounting: the amount by which institutional financial aid and scholarships reduces the amounts students pay.

NACUBO's annual tuition discounting survey shows that for the 2024-25 school year, participating schools discounted tuition by an average of 56.4%. That means that for every $1,000 of tuition charged, only $436 actually got paid. The rest was discounted through scholarships and grants. Furthermore, the survey showed that almost 85% of students at participating institutions were receiving some form of tuition discount, covering an average of 2/3 of tuition.

Furthermore, more than half of survey respondents said they intended to use new financial aid strategies to address upcoming demographic changes, meaning one might expect the discount rate to go even higher as the annual number of high school graduates declines in coming years.

What does this mean for families? First and foremost it means that college may be more within reach financially than list prices would have you think. It does not mean that your student will be offered a 56% tuition reduction at their top-choice college. It does mean that you can find colleges that will offer significant tuition discounts to your student if you're willing to look.

The NACUBO study collected data from 286 private, non-profit US colleges and universities.

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