May 30th, 2023

Back in 2018 I published a newsletter about college costs. The link is below:

https://windsorwealth.management/college-tuition-expenses-what-would-you-do/

When I originally published this newsletter, I was asking myself the question whether I should steer my young daughter at the time to an in-state public, private or out-of-state. If the costs were expensive then, wait until you see the costs now.

I looked at five in-state public schools, five in-state private schools and four out-of-state public & private schools. The five in-state public schools are reasonable especially if you add the HOPE scholarship, but the schools out of state and private are very expensive for the average family.

Some schools didn’t have the 2023-2024 tuition information on their website yet, so I have put the school year’s tuition that I’m quoting below as well. For all costs below, I assumed the maximum meal plan, the maximum dorm or the Freshman dorm and full-time student status which is 12+ hours a semester. These are all estimates I found on each college website.

The U.S. Department of Education link below has a step-by-step menu allowing you to research alternatives.
https://collegecost.ed.gov/

The navigator provides total price details as well.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/

In-State Public Schools

University of Georgia (GO DAWGS): $27,946 for the 2022-2023 school year. This is an increase of 27.74% since 2018.
Georgia Tech: $28,536 for the 2023-2024 school year. This is an increase of 19.35% since 2018.
Georgia College & State University: $14,113 for 2023-2024 school year. So, this sounds inexpensive compared to the other two, but the link to the website is here. Georgia College separates their fees differently. https://www.gcsu.edu/businessoffice/tuition-and-fees
Georgia Southern: $18,828 for the 2022-2023 school year. I did not track this school back in 2018 so I do not have an inflation comparison.
North Georgia University (at the Dahlonega campus): $20,308 which is an increase of 27.72% from 2018.

In-State Private Schools (you might want to sit for this)

I discovered a website that calculates the HOPE scholarship and the Zell scholarship based on the school a student attends and what I saw was that if a student went to a private college their scholarship is less than if they go to a public college. The website is https://apps.gsfc.org/SecureNextGen/dsp_award_amounts.cfm

Mercer University: $59,482 for the 2023-2024 school year with roughly $40,000 of that for tuition. This cost is a 26.13% increase from Mercer’s costs in 2018.
Berry College: $53,266 for the 2022-2023 school year. This is a 12.22% increase from 2018.
Emory University: $83,702 for the 2023-2024 school year. This was one of the most expensive schools I tracked back in 2018 and it looks like it’s still one of the highest. It has increased 16.04% which is lower than some of the other schools.
Brenau University: $45,875 a year for the 2023-2024 school year. In 2018, Brenau’s cost was roughly $43,578 which is only an increase of 5.27%.
Piedmont University: $41,122 a year for the 2022-2023 school year. This college has increased quite a bit especially since I was there back in the early 2000s. I didn’t track Piedmont back in 2018 so I don’t have a cost increase figure.

So far, the public schools have seen the higher cost increases compared to the in-state private schools.

Out-of-State Public and Private Schools

University of Alabama: $53,264 for last year; 2022-2023. This is the non-resident cost. I didn’t track this college back in 2018 but based on what Auburn was in 2018 this was probably a significant increase.
Clemson University: $54,314 for 2022-2023. In 2018, the non-resident cost was roughly $43,734 so that’s an increase of 24.19% since then.
Vanderbilt University: $84,412 for 2022-2023 (whoa!). I didn’t track Vanderbilt in 2018 so I’m not sure of the increase but if I had to guess, it’s probably close to Emory.
Northwestern: $87,804 for last year in 2022-2023 (another whoa!).

For the typically American family, it would be difficult to pay these out-of-state college costs and private college costs without grants and scholarships, maybe that’s why the public schools have increased their costs more over the years because they are still much less than the other schools. The point of this newsletter is to save early, save as much as you can (without compromising your retirement savings) and plan ahead of time. If you need help planning for college and getting started on your savings plan, please give me a call, I’m happy to help.

Thank you for reading!

Christina Jones
CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™
Wealth Manager, RJFS
Partner, Windsor Wealth

Sources:

https://www.admissions.uga.edu/afford/

https://finaid.gatech.edu/costs/undergraduate-costs

https://www.gcsu.edu/businessoffice/tuition-and-fees

https://finserv.georgiasouthern.edu/bursar/office-of-student-accounts/tuition-and-fees/

https://financialaid.mercer.edu/cost-of-attendance/residential-undergraduate/

https://apply.emory.edu/financial-aid/index.html

https://www.brenau.edu/tuition-financial-aid/tuition/

https://www.piedmont.edu/admission-aid/financial-aid/tuition-fees/

https://ung.edu/cost-aid/tuition/tuition-and-fee-estimator.php