Tuition and Fee Charges Versus Inflation at Public and Private Four-Year Colleges (1987 to 2025)

The graphic below is not a Picasso or some bizarro modern art image. So stay with us, please.

This is a representation of the annual increase in tuition and fees, over time, as compared to inflation as measured by annual Consumers Price Index (CPI). This is a very meaningful and problematic graphic.

Note that wee've taken away the outlying years (which were either very high or very low) to make the chart more readable (and it still isn't). What it says is that tuition and fees at four-year publics and four-year nonprofit privates are historically well beyond that of CPI/inflation. This is the biggest major issue impacting the equity, affordability, and government support of postsecondary education, bar none.

As the graphic shows, only in few cases does the annual increase (percentage) in tuition and fees equal, let alone fall below, that of CPI. In almost all years it is 2-4 times that of CPI. Over the past 40 years (1987 to 2025), the increase in tuition and fee charges at public four-year colleges average 2.3 times that of CPI. For private nonprofits the multiple is 2.4. The only real "good news" is that the last decade has been historically low, with publics hovering right around CPI (1.04) versus privates (1.53).

Until we can somehow curtail the upward trends in tuition and fee charges, the cost of college to students and parents will continue to escalate into the stratosphere. The pressure on governments to fill the gap increases, but there will become a point where they simply can't keep up, especially when pressures in health care costs and social security continue to also exceed inflation at large rates.