Postsecondary Tuition, Fees and Degrees

The average tuition and required fees at 4-year public institutions increased more than 5 percent for both in-state and out-of-state students (after adjusting for inflation) between the 2014-15 and 2016-17 school years. During that same time period, tuition and required fees also increased about 5 percent at 4-year nonprofit institutions, and grew about 1 percent at for-profit institutions. The National Center for Education Statistics released a new First Look report today (January 9) that presents data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2016 collection. This collection included three survey components: Institutional Characteristics for the 2016-17 academic year, Completions covering the period July 1, 2015, through June 30, 2016, and data on 12-Month Enrollment for the 2015-16 academic year.   Other findings include: • In 2016-17, there were 6,760 Title IV institutions in the United States and other U.S. jurisdictions— 2,918 were classified as 4-year institutions, 1,995 were 2-year institutions, and the remaining 1,847 were less-than-2-year institutions; • Of the roughly 3.3 million students receiving degrees or certificates at 4-year Title IV degree-granting institutions, more than 58 percent received a bachelor’s degree. This percentage varied by control of institution, with bachelor’s degrees received by about 64 percent of the 1.9 million students at public institutions, 53 percent of the 1.1 million students at nonprofit institutions, and and about 42 percent of the 286,000 students at for-profit institutions; • Institutions reported a 12-month unduplicated headcount enrollment of about 27 million individual students. Of these, about 23.1 million were undergraduates and 3.8 million were graduate students.