Only 3.7% of all students enrolled in American higher education institutions are foreigners, yet they contribute nearly $18 billion to the US economy, according to the US Department of Commerce. Most of this income is generated by tuition and other fees.

Data compiled by the non-profit College Board reveal that annual tuition fees increased by 5.9% from 2008 to 2009 in all sectors of higher education. In the context of the worst recession since the 1930s, it is noteworthy that these figures are only just up from the average 5% annual rate of increase over the past decade.

Disaggregation of the data shows that most private, non-profit four-year institutions were able to keep their fee increases to 4.4% while public four-year institutions raised their tuition between 6% and 10%.

But all economic indications suggest that these are still early days. Indeed, the fact that 48 states faced initial and mid-year budget shortfalls in December totalling $193 billion does not bode well for the public sector institutions they maintain.

For instance, the New Mexico state legislature, responding to its budget deficit of $650 million, has proposed reducing funding to higher education by an additional 4% (or $20 million) for the 2010-11 fiscal year. For the state's network of colleges and universities, this could translate into tuition increases of 6% to resident students and of 15% for non-residents.

In hard figures, such increases for foreign students at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro would mean students would have to pay an additional $2,035 for tuition and fees next year - up to $15,603 in 2010 from $13,568 in 2009. By contrast, in-state students would pay an extra $276 ($4,883).

"Anything [domestic] students are feeling, international students will be feeling five times worse," says Dan Thibeault, co-founder of the student loan consolidation and debt management company, Graduate Leverage.

Tuition fees are significantly higher at private institutions in the US. To attract the best and the brightest domestic and foreign students, these institutions have traditionally offered scholarships and grants financed by reaching into the hitherto deep pockets of their endowment funds.

Estimates pegged the endowment assets of most American private colleges and universities in excess of $500,000 per student in June 2008. The subsequent economic crisis, however, has caused the deflation of these funds and last year, Harvard University's endowment shrank by $10 billion (or 30%).

A survey of institutions with assets exceeding $1 billion estimated that the average decline was 17% in 2009-10. In the absence of scholarships and grants, there are always loans.

Until last year, some of the more prestigious American business schools and graduate programmes were able to secure no-cosigner loans of up to $150,000 from private lenders, CitiAssist and Sallie Mae, to attract the top students. With the collapse of these programmes, many private institutions now stand to lose their ability to attract and nurture emerging global talent.

The irreducible fact therefore remains that as annual tuition and ancillary expenses increase, funding options will shrink. Only time will tell what the long-term impact will be on higher education.

In the short term, however, public institutions are still enjoying increased enrolments - in part because the weaker American dollar has made post-secondary education more affordable for foreign students. In particular, Chinese student numbers were up at the beginning of the 2009-10 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education report Open Doors 2009.

"It is gratifying to learn that despite the current economic hardships, international students continue to have opportunities to study and learn at our public colleges and universities," says Muriel A Howard, President of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

According to the College Board, fees are highest in New England and lowest in the south-west. At private four-year institutions in New England, the average annual tuition fees in 2009 $32,857 compared with $22,500 in the south-west.

In the public sector, the differential was more pronounced: for public two-year institutions, students in New England would have paid about twice as much ($3,992) as those in the south-west ($1,857), while those attending four-year universities would have paid around $9,400 in New England as opposed to $6,800 in the Southwest.

The state with the greatest differential in the average cost of public and private educations is California: in 2009-10, residents could pay from $777 at the two-year Lake Tahoe Community College to $39,332 at the private four-year liberal arts Pitzer College in Claremont. On the other hand, the most expensive private institution in the US for 2009-10 is Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, which charges annual tuition and other fees of nearly $42,000.


Printable version
Email to a friend
Comment on this article

Disclaimer: All reader responses posted on this site are those of the reader ONLY and NOT those of University World News or Higher Education Web Publishing, their associated trademarks, websites and services. University World News or Higher Education Web Publishing does not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with any comments, opinions or statements or other content provided by readers.