Postsecondary Tuition, Fees and Degrees

Between 2017–18 and 2019–20, the average tuition and required fees at 4-year public institutions increased less than 1 percent for in-state and decreased approximately 1 percent for out-of-state students (after adjusting for inflation). During that same time period, tuition and required fees increased approximately 1 percent at 4-year nonprofit institutions and decreased by a little more than 3 percent at for-profit institutions. The National Center for Education Statistics released a new set of data and web tables that includes fully edited and imputed data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2019 collection. This collection included three survey components: Institutional Characteristics for the 2019-20 academic year, Completions covering the period July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2019, and data on 12-Month Enrollment for the 2018–19 academic year. Other findings include: In 2019–20 there were 6,145 Title IV institutions in the United States and other U.S. jurisdictions— 2,764 were classified as 4-year institutions, 1,655 were 2-year institutions, and the remaining 1,726 were less-than-2-year institutions; Of the roughly 3.4 million students receiving degrees or certificates at 4-year Title IV degree-granting institutions, about 58 percent received a bachelor’s degree. This percentage varied by control of institution, with approximately 63 percent of the 2.1 million students at public institutions receiving a bachelor’s degree, roughly 52 percent of the 1.1 million students at private nonprofit institutions receiving a bachelor’s degree, and approximately 40 percent of the 245,000 students at private for-profit institutions receiving a bachelor’s degree; Institutions reported a 12-month unduplicated headcount enrollment totaling approximately 26.3 million individual students. Of these, roughly 22.4 million were undergraduates and approximately 3.9 million were graduate students.