At private colleges, prices rose 5.9 percent, to $25,143, though financial aid can reduce net costs substantially to about $14,900 on average at private schools.
Parents are frustrated that the extra dollars paid by families to public institutions are mostly just replacing vanishing state money, rather than buying a better education, according to a new report released last week by the Delta Project, a nonprofit group studying college costs.
The report finds the cost of tuition rose 29.8 percent at public research universities from 2002 to 2006, but education and general spending per student rose just 8.4 percent.
Meanwhile, the share of college budgets going to administration and student services as opposed to instruction rose.
“Students are paying more and arguably getting less,” said Jane Wellman, executive director of the Delta Project.
Brit Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system, is luckier than many of his counterparts: Maryland's public colleges have not raised tuition for three years. So the state may have more flexibility to adopt a modest tuition increase.
But Kirwan insists everyone will share in the austerity.
“We have to keep the lights on and pay health care and other benefits and utility bills, but we're not expecting to do much more than that,” he said. “With what's going on in our country, there's an obligation here to make it possible for kids to go to college.”
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