Experts Worry as College Prices Approach $100,000 per Year

Experts are sounding the alarm in the wake of college prices closing in on $100,000 per year when counting tuition, fees, room and board, books, and other living expenses.

“Among the schools appearing on The Princeton Review’s ‘The Best 389 Colleges’ list, eight institutions — including New York University, Tufts, Brown, Yale and Washington University in St. Louis — have a sticker price of more than $90,000 for the 2024-25 academic year,” CNBC reported.

Those tuition prices could well cross into the $100,000 territory come 2026 so long as the adjustments average roughly 4 percent a year. Sameer Gadkaree, president of the Institute for College Access and Success, told CNBC the trend will likely “discourage students from seeing that [college] as a place they can attend, despite grant aid.”

“It’s simply unaffordable,” he said. “It’s absolutely a worrisome trend.”

Gadkree, however, added that schools with that high of a price tag represent “a small slice of the higher education pie.”

“The vast majority of colleges are open-access community colleges or state universities where the prices are not that high,” he said.

For instance, Sallie Mae’s annual How America Pays for College report noted that parents spent roughly $28,409 for the 2023-24 academic year. Student loans cover another quarter of college costs while free money, grants, and scholarships cover the rest. On the federal level, the U.S. Department of Education awards $120 billion a year in student aid, but experts said those applications have gone down, which shows fewer students are attending college.

“We know that fewer students applied for financial aid, which translates into few students attending college,” said Robert Franek, editor-in-chief of The Princeton Review. “It is hard for students and parents to see a lofty sticker price and think that school is going to be able to help me.

Franek did note, however, that certain private schools are helping students with their needs. “There are many schools out there that are meeting students’ and families’ demonstrated need, and that is the glorious story here,” Franek said.

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