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How much could college cost for your kids?

We looked into the cost of tuition at 100 national universities for the past ten years to find out.

The average school has increased tuition + fees by 30% over the last decade, even after accounting for inflation

If we don’t slow that down, the average school in our dataset will cost twice as much for your kids as it does today

20 Most Expensive Schools Today

20 Most Expensive Schools For Your Kids

School 2017/18 Cost
in 2019 Dollars
School 2045/46 Cost
in 2019 Dollars *
1Columbia$58KWilliam and Mary$156K
2U Chicago$57KTexas Christian$141K
3Tufts$55KSMU$141K
4USC$55KBaylor$133K
5Carnegie Mellon$55KIllinois IofT$126K
6Brandeis$55KU Chicago$118K
7UPenn$54KColumbia$116K
8Duke$54KFordham$107K
9GW$54KUSC$105K
10Brown$54KDartmouth$104K
11Dartmouth$54KCornell$103K
12BC$54KNortheastern$103K
13Tulane$54KDuke$102K
14Cornell$54KBrandeis$101K
15Northwestern$54KBC$100K
16SMU$53KUPenn$99K
17Rensselaer$53KRice$99K
18Georgetown$53KTufts$99K
19Johns Hopkins$53KCalTech$98K
20BU$53KNorthwestern$97K

20 Most Expensive Schools Today

School 2017/18 Cost
in 2019 Dollars
1Columbia$58K
2U Chicago$57K
3Tufts$55K
4USC$55K
5Carnegie Mellon$55K
6Brandeis$55K
7UPenn$54K
8Duke$54K
9GW$54K
10Brown$54K
11Dartmouth$54K
12BC$54K
13Tulane$54K
14Cornell$54K
15Northwestern$54K
16SMU$53K
17Rensselaer$53K
18Georgetown$53K
19Johns Hopkins$53K
20BU$53K

20 Most Expensive Schools For Your Kids

School 2045/46 Cost
in 2019 Dollars
1William and Mary$156K
2Texas Christian$141K
3SMU$141K
4Baylor$133K
5Illinois IofT$126K
6U Chicago$118K
7Columbia$116K
8Fordham$107K
9USC$105K
10Dartmouth$104K
11Cornell$103K
12Northeastern$103K
13Duke$102K
14Brandeis$101K
15BC$100K
16UPenn$99K
17Rice$99K
18Tufts$99K
19CalTech$98K
20Northwestern$97K

See what could happen at your school or alma mater

How did we run the numbers?

  • Step 1: Look at nominal tuition and mandatory fees for each school, as reported by IPEDS. This includes data through the 2017-18 academic year.
  • Step 2: Adjust historical tuition + fees for 2019 dollars. Multiply nominal data by inflation factor. Specifically, anchor on 2019, look at Bureau of Labor Statistics data on what a dollar in 2018 is worth in 2019, for example. Repeat the process for all previous years.
  • Step 3: Now that you have inflation adjusted tuition + fees, calculate the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the past 10 years. Mechanically, the formula is (Final Year Tuition / First Year Tuition)^(1/10)-1. You can also do this over a 3 year period.
  • Step 4: Project future costs. We've already adjusted for inflation in the previous step, so the formula is (2019 tuition + fees) X (1 + Inflation Adjusted CAGR)^(t years in the future).

Learn more about your University