Looking for a college bargain? Try any of nine University of Puerto Rico campuses, where annual tuition hovers at or below $2,000.
Counting pennies? Avoid Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, a private school where tuition, fees and room and board exceeds $50,000, making it one of the five most expensive schools on a new U.S. Department of Education guide to college costs.
The federal agency released its College Affordability and Transparency lists on Thursday to fulfill a reporting requirement passed into law in 2008. The online lists track tuition costs among the top and bottom 5 percent of four-year and two-year schools. The measures include public, private and for-profit colleges and universities.
Separate lists show the most and least affordable schools when scholarships and other financial factors are considered. The Education Department says those “sticker prices” better reflect out-of-pocket attendance costs. Two other lists track the rate of tuition increases as well as the rate of increase in the average net price. And career college users interested in a specific track can search by their area of interest, such as cosmetology or automotive repair.
“Given the energy and commitment that families make to the process … this information is very useful,” said David Bergeron, the Education Department’s deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation.
Education officials also acknowledged the data’s limitations. For instance, the attendance costs that elevated Bates and four other East Coast liberal arts schools to the top of the private school heap include fees other than tuition that their peer institutions calculate separately.
And while the new lists highlight schools at the very top and bottom, they don’t account for the other 90 percent of institutions though individual costs and other details can still be found using links on the department’s College Navigator website.
