College tuition is nothing if not a hot topic
right now. One of the best things you can learn about when you’re trying to
become more informed about college tuition is the ins and outs of how the
tuition process works. If you don’t know much about it, you’re more likely to
have a hard time talking about it. Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know
about what your college tuition actually pays for.
1. Breaking Down $100 of Tuition
The bare-bones information about how your college spends the tuition you pay
has to do with a variety of information. When you pay $100 of tuition, where
does it go?
●
$15.81 – Salaries
●
$11.47 – General Instruction
Expenses
●
$9.61 – Auxiliary Student
Enterprises
●
$8.26 – Academic Support
●
$8.15 – Institutional Support
●
$4.75 – Student Services
●
$3.41 – Grants and Financial Aid
What about the rest? That goes to everything else
that universities and colleges invest in. On average, here’s where the other
$38.54 goes.
●
$15.58 – Hospitals and Healthcare
●
$11.66 – Research
●
$6.25 – Other, Including Taxes
and Liabilities
●
$4.52 – Public Services
●
$0.53 – Independent Operations
Some of these things, including hospitals and research,
can be extremely important for a student’s success opportunities. However,
because they’re not directly associated with student education in the
classroom, they’re still considered part of the “non-academic” block of
spending.
2. Public Versus Private
Another major difference in college tuition stems from the difference
between public and private colleges. What is the difference? It depends on who
you ask, but one major difference is in cost.
To see a more understandable metric of expense, you might want to look at the
cost of a year of schooling, including fees, tuition, and room and board, in
the 2019/2020 school year. According to the College Board, this averaged
$21,950 for a student attending an in-state public school and a whopping
$49,870 for a student attending a private school.
3. Tuition as a Percentage of Public
School Revenue
Did you know that tuition rarely if ever makes up enough of a college’s
income base to provide the entirety of the school’s income? Most of the time,
schools have to use either government grants, as public schools typically do,
or endowments, as private schools do, to cover their operating costs every
year. It’s exceedingly rare to be able to cover all of a college’s costs with
tuition.
However, the percentage of operating costs that tuition covers can still be
interesting to look at. This is especially true because in 2000, this
percentage was 29.2% on average. However, in 2018, after more than a 25%
cumulative increase in tuition, it now makes up 46.6% on average. That means it
moved from being not even one third to being nearly one half.
Conclusion
Tuition is a complicated topic for sure. It’s important that you consider a
variety of concepts when you think about how you may be able to manage your
tuition needs. Whether you’re having academic talks about tuition or you just
want to know more when you talk to your friends about it, more information is
always an important element of the tuition process.
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