Consider This from NPR - College Acceptance: Check. Paying For It: A Big Question Mark.

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

Lots of colleges and universities have announced tuition hikes for the upcoming school year, just as inflation is taking a bite out of many families' budgets.Still, NPR's Elissa Nadworny explains that the real cost of college for most students has actually been falling for the past few years, after decades of growth.But college is still very expensive, and it can feel out of reach for some students. Two Washington, D.C. high school students explain how they're trying to make the math work.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. It's happening across the country at public universities. Just hours ago, the State Board of Regents approved tuition increases for the state's top three universities. Arizona, ASU, and NAU. And private ones. Georgetown University, hiking tuition up by nearly 5%.

Even community colleges. Students at Central Oregon Community College will also need to prepare for higher costs. Ten years ago, this would not have been news. Big annual tuition hikes were the norm in higher ed. But during the pandemic, as remote classes and campus COVID outbreaks took some of the luster off the college experience, lots of schools froze tuition. It was a welcome bit of good news for many college students and their families, but now it's ending. Consider this. College tuition is ticking back up again at the same time inflation is taking a bite out of families' budgets. Ahead, we'll hear from students who got coveted acceptance letters and are struggling to make the financial math work. I've definitely been surprised at the price tags on some of the colleges that I've wanted to go to.

And scholarships have become synonymous with college for me. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, May 1st. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org.

It's Consider This from NPR. It's College Decision Day, when admitted students pick where they are going to spend the next four or more years. Now, that deadline is not as firm as it once was, but it's still the day that lots of students fork over a deposit, the first of many payments they'll make to the college they ultimately attend. Often, a huge part of the college decision process is figuring out how they're going to make those payments, especially right now in the midst of stubborn inflation that is causing almost everything to cost more. Well, NPR's Alyssa Nadwerny covers higher ed and is with us now. Hey, Alyssa.

Hello. Hi. So this is all hitting awfully close to home for me. I have a college freshman, so we are making those tuition payments for the first time this year. Talk to me about where things stand. What sorts of tuition raises are we seeing this year? Well, this spring, we've started to see a bunch of headlines of a handful of schools raising tuition for next school year. So we've got some highly selective colleges like Stanford University out in California, Duke University in North Carolina, and then all across the country, state universities or state systems are doing this as well.

So you might see that in the headlines, but actually, despite those price tag increases, there is some good news about college costs in general. Tuition is nowhere near keeping up with inflation. So that is Robert Kelchin. He's a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He studies student financial aid and college finance. And he told me that the cost of college has actually been staying pretty steady, especially through the pandemic these last several years. The last three or four years have seen some of the smallest tuition increases in decades. Smallest in decades. Okay, so what's the context here? Because for ages, it seems like we've heard about college tuition

growing at this runaway pace. That's no longer still the case. Okay, well, it's a little complicated. So it's true that tuition has been going up over the last 30 years. But often when we talk about skyrocketing tuition, that's the sticker price. That is that big number on the college website that very few people pay. You know, most students get financial aid, which includes need-based scholarship grants or merit money. That's, you know, just for good grades. And when you subtract that from the sticker price, you get the actual price that families are paying. So I talked with Philip Levine, who is this economist and professor at Wellesley College. He has been tracking that actual price of college over time. In the end, the real price of college after adjusting for inflation has

actually been falling. That is also the case when he looked at selective colleges. Those are those ones with the really big sticker prices. You know, families are paying roughly 20 percent less than they did seven or eight years ago. It's so interesting because it really doesn't feel that way when you're writing the tuition checks. But why is this happening, this trend that Philip Levine is talking about there? So there's a couple of things going on. Definitely during the pandemic, there was this huge influx of federal funding to colleges and universities, and some of that money went to helping students pay. So that's some of those institutional grants, scholarships. States have also increased money specifically for this, for grants and scholarships for students.

Sometimes it's in the form of free college programs, or sometimes they're called college promise programs. And they kind of help drive down that actual tuition number. And we are in a period of time where fewer students are choosing to go to college. So during the pandemic, there were about a million fewer students enrolled in college. So these are people who are coming usually straight from high school or they were in college and they dropped out. And this is mostly because low-wage jobs without a college degree are actually much higher than they were even three years ago. Like you can make $20 an hour in a warehouse, combine that with paying a lot of money to go to school. For many students, that's just a

decision they didn't want to make. One thing that's also kind of happening here at play is for low income students, the federal Pell Grant. So that's money that gets approved from Congress. That has been increasing. Next year, the maximum amount for that will be just over $7,000 a year. I'm listening to you and thinking a lot of this sounds like really good news for students, for their families, that college, if you want to go, is a little more feasible? Lower prices are good, yes. There is a lot of money out there for students and families to make this more real, to make this possible. And yet, college is still very expensive. I mean, even as the cost of college goes down, with inflation, the cost of everything else in your life is going up. So that means there's just less money in your budget to put

towards tuition. I talked to several economists about this, and they said, you know, you don't need an increase in college prices, an increase in what folks pay for it to be really hard to pay for college. It's still not something that's in reach for a lot of families. What about when you talk to students? What are you hearing from them? So I talked with Nevae Fleming, who is a high school senior in Washington, D.C. She got into 13 colleges, but she's not exactly celebrating. I used to be so happy to receive congratulations in the mail. I don't know how I feel about it anymore.

You know, that happiness has turned to sadness because she started to look at the numbers. And she's realizing even after all the financial aid, the cost of college is still way more than her family could pay. And that's at all of those 13 colleges. Yes, I like the schools. I applied to them. I got into them. But I can't go to them. She keeps all this data in a spreadsheet where she tracks kind of the, you know, that sticker price, the scholarships, how much she's expected to pay. Okay, so I have the numbers up. So the least amount that I would have to pay for one of my colleges is $9,000. $9,000 is just, it's too much for her family right now.

She's the oldest of four kids. Two of her brothers are twins and they're also in high school and they're thinking about college. And Nevaeh is determined not to take out any student loans. I don't want that in my life at all. I know what it does to people. So that doesn't leave her with a lot of options. Her plan now is to apply to even more schools. So cheaper, local, maybe a community college. Experts say, you know, that is one path

that families are taking when they can't make the math work. You said that's one path, Alyssa. What's the other one? The other path is you could take out a lot of loans. I mean, if the math doesn't work out, that's the option you have. I talked to a student named Elijah Vicks. He's also in D.C. He's a senior at Thurgood Marshall Academy. He got in and he really wants to go to Morehouse College. That's in Atlanta. It's an HBCU and it's top rated. It's been my goal for a while, but the money is definitely a stressor. He did get some scholarships from Morehouse and from kind of outside organizations, but he's still looking at over about $30,000 a year. It's kind of like being punished for being in the middle. It's like, I'm not rich, but I'm not poor.

And I wouldn't want to take any opportunities from anybody who needs them more than me. But the school that I want to go to, I wasn't matched with any of their in-house scholarships for incoming freshmen because I don't have a quote unquote need. But I do. His mom is a contractor. So some years her income looks really high and other years work, you know, isn't there. So it's not super steady. And he really doesn't want to be a burden for her. I worry about her because I don't want her just taking any project

because she's worried about paying for my college. But at the same time, I mean, she kind of doesn't have an option. So he's telling me he's still going to go. His plan is to do work study. He's going to be applying to a lot more scholarships this spring and summer. And his mom says that she is prepared to take on loans for him. So for undergrad, he can get up to $5,500 in federal student loans. His mom can take out Parent PLUS loans, and you can borrow Parent PLUS loans all the way up to the cost of attendance.

So there are some risks to that, right? Because it could end up being a lot of money. They could borrow a lot of money for his college. And this is kind of what families have to consider. You know, research shows there is a big boost to your wages when you get a bachelor's degree. And a place like Morehouse, you know, they produce the most Black doctors, the most Black lawyers. That could make a huge difference in Elijah's life. But he and his mom are going to have to consider the debt burden too. Yeah. I want to end with a little bit of practical advice. And I'm thinking of high school juniors. I'm also in this boat. I also have a high school junior getting ready to apply to college. And, you know, people are thinking about what kind

of situation they're going to be in? Do they want to think about taking out loans or putting off enrolling? How do you figure out the true cost of a college and if you'll be able to afford it? Yeah. So I have two tips for you. The one is that all schools make this data available, kind of how much their true cost is in something called the common data set. So if you just Google common data set and the college name that you're interested in, this should come up. And you can actually scroll down, look for line H-2A. I know this is complicated, but this is like a goldmine of data.

If you look for line H-2A on this Common Data Set, you'll see how much money they give in merit-based and federal aid. Highly recommend parents and families do this. This is the number you should be comparing, not that big sticker price. And then, of course, the other thing is if you don't want to do some like deep research, finding this document and looking for this number, you can ask the college. You can ask the college, what is your average cost of attendance? What is the actual number that most families pay to go here? And they will tell you. NPR Higher Education Correspondent, Alyssa Nadwarni.

Thanks for all of this, for your reporting and for the tips. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography.

Kauffman.org.