Net Price Calculator Publications and Resources

Since October 29, 2011, almost all U.S. colleges and universities are required to have "net price calculators" on their websites. These online tools can make it much easier for prospective students and their families to look past often scary "sticker prices" and start figuring out which colleges they might be able to afford.

Net price calculators provide early, individualized estimates of what a specific college will cost after grants and scholarships. The "net price" is what students and their families would have to earn, save, or borrow to go to that school.  This early information about college costs and financial aid can help students discover that their dream school may be more (or less) affordable than they thought - before they have to decide where to apply.

Resources from TICAS:

  • Tips for Using "Net Price Calculators" (November 2011). Consumer tips for how to find, use, and make the most of these new online tools.

  • Net Price Calculators as Financial Aid "Game Changers" (September 2011). Response to New York Times blog post on the potential usefulness of net price calculators.

  • Adding It All Up: An Early Look at Net Price Calculators (March 2011). We found mixed results for how easy net price calculators were to find, use, and understand, even among early adopters. This issue brief details our investigation's findings and offers recommendations for how colleges can make their calculators as helpful as possible for students and their families. See our press release for a summary.

  • A First Look at Net Price Data (August 2010). Overview of the Department of Education's new net price data and the federal net price calculator requirement for colleges. This blog post includes an example of a net price calculator that displays cost estimates in a misleading way, making the college look more affordable than it likely will be.

Resources from the Department of Education:

Featured Work


poll

Poll: Young Adults Say Higher Education is More Important but Less Affordable

A national bi-partisan survey of adults ages 18-34 reveals that young adults today believe a college education is more important than it was for their parents' generation, that it has become less affordable in the last five years, and that students are leaving school with too much debt.

 

SDR2010

Student Debt and the Class of 2010

College seniors who graduated in 2010 carried an average of $25,250 in student loan debt and also faced the highest unemployment levels for new college graduates in recent history at 9.1 percent.

 

Critical Choices

Our new report looks at promising and problematic practices of financial aid offices when students apply for private student loans.

 

Still Denied

Our new issue brief Still Denied: How Community Colleges Shortchange Students by Not Offering Federal Loans found that more than one million community college students were denied access federal student loans, the safest and most affordable way to borrow for college.

 

Adding It All Up

By the end of October, U.S. colleges must meet a federal requirement to create online "net price calculators." We took an early look at how colleges are approaching this requirement and found mixed results for how easy the calculators were to find, use, and understand. 

 



iconStudent Debt and the Class of 2009

Our student debt report for the class of 2009 found college seniors carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt while unemployment climbed from 5.8% to 8.7% in 2009.

 

 

After the FAFSA

This report sheds light on what happens to federal financial aid applicants after they submit the FAFSA. Using 2007-08 financial aid data from 13 California community colleges, the Institute found that one in three likely Pell-eligible applicants did not receive a Pell Grant.