Paying for higher education at four-year public universities costs 47 percent more than it did a decade ago, according to a study released last week by the College Board.
The nonprofit New York-based organization used inflation-adjusted dollars to develop the annual report, but College Board officials said the poor condition of the economy and cuts in state appropriations might be the reasons for the increase.
"Whenever there was a decrease in appropriations, there was an increase in tuition average," said Jennifer Topiel, a spokeswoman for the College Board.
Tuition at private universities also has grown by 42 percent during the past year.
Topiel said more than 2,700 schools participated in the report by responding to surveys sent by the College Board.
She added that tuition has increased an average of 14.1 percent for the 2003-04 school year compared to last academic year, which is the highest one-year increase ever reported by the institution in the 27 years of the study, Topiel said.
David Byelich, director of the MSU Office of Planning and Budgets, said when adjusting to inflation, MSU's tuition has increased only 24.7 percent over the last decade, an average increase of 2.2 percent annually since the 1993-94 academic year.
Without adjusting for inflation, MSU's tuition rose by 57.3 percent over a 10-year period. MSU economics Professor Charles Ballard said the only meaningful way to look at tuition increases is to make an adjustment for inflation.
"All sorts of other prices have been increasing as well," Ballard said. "So if we want to look at what's really happening with tuition, we want to compare it with what tuition would have been if it had just gone up with rate of inflation."
Byelich said this academic year's increase of 9.9 percent is the highest tuition increase in the last decade.
MSU President M. Peter McPherson said MSU's tuition guarantee - which existed from 1994 to 2001 and kept tuition increases at or below the projected rate of inflation - kept the university's increases below national averages.
"There was basically no real increase in tuition going on at that time," McPherson said Monday night. "The increase in excess in inflation has come in the last three years."
The guarantee ceased with cuts in state funding to MSU, McPherson said.
Topiel said of the $105 billion in financial aid sought by college-bound students around the country, 45.4 percent came from federal loans, including an additional 11.1 percent from federal Pell grants, 5.6 from state-administered grants and 19.4 percent from grants given out by universities.
Val Myers, associate director for advising services in the Office of Financial Aid, said in 2002-03, 65 percent of students had some kind of financial aid.
In 2001-02, MSU students received more than $243 million in financial aid, which shot up to more than $301 million for 2002-03, Myers said.
And she said she expects another increase in financial aid this academic year because of the poor economy.
Tim McDonough, director of public affairs with the American Council of Education, an organization representing more than 1,800 universities on federal college education issues, said tuition increases directly coincide with more people seeking financial support to attend colleges.
"The bad news is we are seeing a rapid increase in tuition prices," he said. "The good news is that there is a record amount of financial aid to help students pay for those bills."
