Many High School Students Incorrectly Estimate the Cost of College, Often Overestimating Tuition and Fees for a Public 4-Year College in Their State

Today, October 10, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released a new report entitled What High Schoolers and Their Parents Know About Public 4-Year Tuition and Fees in Their State.   The report presents analyses of data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), which has followed a nationally representative sample of 2009 high school freshmen through high school and beyond. The analyses examine the accuracy of students’ and their parents’ estimates of public 4-year tuition and mandatory fees in their states by comparing their estimates with actual tuition and fee amounts obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Findings from the report include the following: Fifty-seven percent of 9th-graders overestimated tuition and fees by more than 25 percent, and a 32 percent underestimated tuition and fees by more than 25 percent. When students were asked about their confidence in the tuition and fee estimates they provided in 9th grade, 27 percent reported that they were not at all confident that they estimated accurately. Two years later, when most students were in 11th grade, 51 percent said they did not know the cost of tuition and fees at 4-year public colleges in their states. One-quarter (25 percent) of 9th-graders disagreed or strongly disagreed that college was affordable. Two years later, one-third (33 percent) of these students reported the same. In addition, the percentage of students who planned to enroll in a bachelor’s degree program declined from 51 percent when students were in 9th grade to 45 percent 3 years later, when most had just completed high school.