Appendix X: HOW AMERICA PAYS FOR COLLEGE
Choosing a School How America Pays for College 2016 reveals most families’ decisions about which college to attend are influenced heavily by price—both the gross cost of attendance, and the net cost to the family after receiving financial aid. • 67 percent of families factored the price of a college when narrowing their list of schools. • 55 percent of families eliminated schools from their prospective set due to cost before they began the college application process. • 44 percent of families waited to receive the financial aid award before making their final school choice. For making the final decision, the primary reason families gave for choosing the school the student attends was split between academic program (31%) and choice (31%), with financial considerations a close third (27%). “ Affordability The average published tuition and fee price for full-time in-state students at public four-year colleges and universities is $9,970 in 2017-18, $300 (3.1% before adjusting for inflation) higher than it was in 2016-17. In 2017-18, the average published tuition and fee price of $3,570 at public two-year colleges is 36% of the average in-state public four-year price.
Table 1: The average Tuition and Fees and Room and Board in Current Dollars, 2016-17 and 2017-18.
Sources: College Board, Annual Survey of Colleges; NCES, IPEDS Fall 2015 Enrollment data.
Affordability by race-ethnicity, as represented by the percentage of median income
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