Postsecondary Tuition, Fees and Degrees

Between 2015-16 and 2017-18, the average tuition and required fees at 4-year public institutions increased more than 2 percent for both in-state and out-of-state students (after adjusting for inflation). During that same time period, tuition and required fees increased more than 3 percent at 4-year nonprofit institutions and decreased by 1.5 percent at for-profit institutions. The National Center for Education Statistics released a new First Look report today (November 6) that is a revised version of the preliminary report released on June 5, 2018. It includes fully edited and imputed data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2017 collection. This collection included three survey components: Institutional Characteristics for the 2017-18 academic year, Completions covering the period July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017, and data on 12-Month Enrollment for the 2016-17 academic year. Other findings include: In 2017-18, there were 6,642 Title IV institutions in the United States and other U.S. jurisdictions—2,902 were classified as 4-year institutions, 1,932 were 2-year institutions, and the remaining 1,808 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 about 64 percent of the 2.0 million students at public institutions receiving a bachelor’s degree, roughly 53 percent of the 1.1 million students at nonprofit institutions receiving a bachelor’s degree, and about 41 percent of the 277,000 students at for-profit institutions receiving a bachelor’s degree; Institutions reported a 12-month unduplicated headcount enrollment of about 26.7 million individual students. Of these, roughly 22.9 million were undergraduates and approximately 3.8 million were graduate students.