On March 4, the University of Southern California announced its tuition for the 2016-2017 school year will surpass $50,000 for the first time in school history. This makes it one of the most expensive universities in the nation and is indicative of a growing trend: Colleges nationwide are getting increasingly expensive.
Though private colleges are dominating the headlines when it comes to tuition hikes, public schools are quietly raising their prices at a higher rate. What were once imminently affordable schools are now putting more of a financial strain on current students.
Using the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics, StartClass found the 25 colleges with the biggest tuition increases over the past 10 years. All tuition amounts reported are inflation-adjusted for 2015 dollars.
For this list, we used the reported in-state tuition for each college. We also only included schools with at least 5,000 undergraduate students. Colleges are sorted by their 10-year in-state tuition percentage increase, and the data reflects the change from the 2004-2005 school year to the 2014-2015 school year.
Of the 25 schools listed, 16 saw their in-state tuition double over the past decade. The school on the list with the highest 2014 in-state tuition β the College of William and Mary β cost $17,674 this past year.
