June 15, 2026
The annual price of attendance — which incorporates tuition, charges, housing, meals, books, transportation, and different bills — surpassed the six-figure mark.
Sixteen U.S. faculties and universities will price greater than $100,000 a yr to attend throughout the 2026-27 educational yr, in response to Princeton Overview Information. This knowledge underscores rising issues about faculty affordability nationwide, CNBC experiences.
The annual price of attendance — which incorporates tuition, charges, housing, meals, books, transportation, and different bills — surpassed the six-figure mark at establishments together with Duke College, Georgetown College, New York College, and the College of Chicago, in response to findings from The Princeton Overview’s upcoming “The Greatest 392 Schools” information. Brown College, Northwestern College, and Pepperdine College every reported annual prices exceeding $99,000.
Greater training analyst Jeff Selingo mentioned the milestone displays a long-term pattern of rising faculty costs that’s starting to check households’ willingness to pay.
“We have now been shifting towards this six-figure price ticket for a very long time, and now we’re right here — and for lots of people that feels vital,” Selingo mentioned.
The rising prices are additionally influencing enrollment selections. Information from the Nationwide Scholar Clearinghouse Analysis Middle present undergraduate enrollment continues to develop modestly, with beneficial properties concentrated at neighborhood faculties and four-year public universities.
“There’s a group of establishments that used to have the ability to command growing their value with no downside, and now they’re discovering college students and households pushing again,” Selingo mentioned.
Regardless of the headline-grabbing sticker costs, training consultants be aware that many college students pay considerably lower than the marketed price due to institutional help.
“The price of faculty is sobering — little question about that,” Robert Franek, editor in chief of The Princeton Overview, mentioned in an announcement. “With some faculties’ sticker costs crossing the $100,000 mark, paying for school appears all of the extra daunting.”
A number of elite establishments have expanded monetary help applications in recent times. Harvard College, the College of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise provide tuition-free attendance for a lot of undergraduate college students from households incomes as much as $200,000 yearly, in response to these universities.
The Nationwide Affiliation of Faculty and College Enterprise Officers reported that personal faculties offered a mean tuition low cost fee of 57% for first-time, full-time undergraduates throughout the 2025-26 educational yr. The group mentioned faculties awarded roughly 57 cents in grant help for each greenback of potential undergraduate tuition income.
“The info inform a transparent story: Don’t rule out a non-public faculty as a consequence of its sticker value, as a result of odds are excellent that you’ll obtain a grant from that college,” NACUBO President and CEO Kara Freeman mentioned in an announcement.
A separate Sallie Mae report, “How America Pays for Faculty,” discovered households sometimes cowl solely about half of faculty bills by way of earnings and financial savings, with scholarships, grants, and pupil loans accounting for a lot of the rest.
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