The U.S. Department of Education recently launched a great new website, the College Affordability and Transparency Center, designed to help students get information about the cost of an undergraduate college education.
One of the neatest features is a little tool that lets you look at lists of institutions with the highest/lowest tuition and highest/lowest net prices. The net cost lists are particularly interesting - they take into account all the costs of attending university (tuition, fees, housing, books, etc.) and subtract the average amount of aid received in order to find out the true average cost for a student.
But international students beware. That list of net costs only applies to domestic students - and for public colleges, it only applies to in-state or in-district students. Some colleges DO offer a lot of aid to international students, and make an effort to keep the net cost low, but they may not be the same colleges that offer a low net cost to domestic students or state residents.
Here's a side-by-side comparison of the top 10 highest and lowest net cost lists you'd get using the college cost tool, and the top 10 for international students, based on our calculations. You can see right away that the results are quite different for international students.
1) Lowest Net Cost
4-year Private Non-Profit Institutions:
| College cost tool | Net Cost ($) | International students | Net Cost ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Universidad Teologica del Caribe | 82 | Berea College* | 209 |
| Talmudical Academy - New Jersey | 469 | Gettysburg College | 2972 |
| Colegio Pentecostal Mizpa | 1776 | Skidmore College | 3268 |
| Baptist Missionary Association Theological Seminary | 1876 | College of the Atlantic | 3790 |
| John Dewey College - University Division | 1956 | Paine College | 3820 |
| Turtle Mountain Community College | 2031 | Southwestern Christian College | 4033 |
| Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico - Ponce | 2208 | Yale University | 4449 |
| Southeastern Baptist College | 2699 | Kentucky Mountain Bible College | 5024 |
| Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem of America | 2839 | Trinity College | 6507 |
| Our Lady of Holy Cross College | 2874 | Wayland Baptist University | 6585 |
4-year Public Institutions:
| College cost tool | Net Cost ($) | International students | Net Cost ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sitting Bull College | 938 | Alabama State University | 263 |
| Escuela de Artes Plasticas de Puerto Rico | 996 | Fort Lewis College | 6199 |
| South Texas College | 1317 | University of West Alabama | 7386 |
| University of Puerto Rico-Aguadilla | 1591 | Haskell Indian Nations University | 7760 |
| University of Texas Pan American | 1646 | Alabama A&M University | 7998 |
| Indian River State College | 2138 | The Citadel | 8243 |
| University of Puerto Rico-Bayamon | 2345 | South Dakota State University | 9474 |
| California State University - Dominguez Hills | 2451 | University of Science and Arts at Oklahoma | 9478 |
| California State University - Los Angeles | 3263 | Kentucky State University | 9991 |
| Elizabeth City State University | 3335 | Missouri Southern State University | 10174 |
2) Highest Net Cost
4-year Private Non-Profit Institutions:
| College cost tool | Net Cost ($) | International students | Net Cost ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Art Center College of Design | 39672 | Fordham University | 56454 |
| The New School - Parsons | 39004 | Art Center College of Design | 56190 |
| School of the Art Institute of Chicago | 38965 | Rhode Island School of Design | 55805 |
| The Boston Conservatory | 37798 | New York University | 55542 |
| California Institute of the Arts | 36997 | Bard College at Simon's Rock | 55432 |
| Manhattan School of Music | 36208 | Johns Hopkins University | 55390 |
| Rhode Island School of Design | 35991 | Carnegie Mellon University | 55286 |
| Pratt Institute | 35506 | Duke University | 55150 |
| Santa Clara University | 35245 | School of the Art Institute of Chicago | 55090 |
| Northwestern Health Sciences University | 35062 | Pitzer College | 55080 |
4-year Public Institutions:
| College cost tool | Net Cost ($) | International students | Net Cost ($) |
|---|---|---|---|
| University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio | 24192 | University of Michigan-Ann Arbor | 48331 |
| University of Guam | 23902 | University of Colorado at Boulder | 46729 |
| St. Mary's College of Maryland | 21468 | University of Vermont | 44838 |
| Rowan University | 19344 | University of California:Los Angeles ** | 41784 |
| Miami University - Oxford | 19305 | University of Cincinnati-Main Campus | 41725 |
| Pennsylvania State University - Main Campus | 19056 | Pennsylvania State University-Main Campus | 41548 |
| Pennsylvania State University - Altoona | 18878 | University of California: Davis | 41085 |
| Pennsylvania State University - Erie-Behrend | 18857 | New Jersey Institute of Technology | 40758 |
| University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh | 18786 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | 40680 |
| Pennsylvania State University - Penn State Berks | 18048 | Colorado School of Mines | 39551 |
Pretty different, huh?
Where do these numbers come from?
There are some nuances about how the Department of Education calculates net cost, which will explain why they're not valid for international students.
First of all, they calculate total cost using the lowest available tuition rate, which for public universities is only available to residents of the state or district in which the college is located. Secondly, their calculation for average financial aid received includes federal loans and grants, that international students are not eligible to receive. Finally, and this one might be a little nitpicky, they calculate the cost of room and board using a weighted average of all living options, including living at home with family, which is typically not an option for international students.
I calculated the net cost for international students using the same basic calculation as the Department of Education - total cost minus average aid - but inputted values that would be more relevant to foreign students.
I used the total cost reported by the Department of Education for out-of-state students living on campus (or off campus if on-campus housing was not an option). The value of average aid received comes from the College Board International Student Handbook 2012.
Footnotes:
* = Total cost was calculated using information on the school's website rather than the reported number in the Department of Education's data, which appeared to be incorrect
** = Average international student aid was taken from a PDF prepared by the OACAC for 2009/2010, because no number was reported in the CollegeBoard handbook
Some caveats:
The Department of Education lists use net cost as reported for 2008-2009. My calculations for international students used the most recent data available - 2010-2011 for total cost and 2011-2012 for aid. That will obviously create some inconsistencies in comparing the two.
The average amount of aid received is only calculated for those students receiving aid and does not take into account what percentage of students received aid. This is the case for the Department of Education data and the College Board data. For a good analysis of the most generous schools for international students taking into account the number receiving assistance, look at internationalcounselor.org.
Finally, this information is just meant to show you how big a difference there is between what net cost looks like for a domestic student compared to an international student. It will not tell you exactly what you will pay for college at any given school, and great financial aid offers may be available at schools that ended up on the list of most expensive schools. Everyone's situation is different.
Click here to see the full spreadsheet with all the data I used - feel free to email if you find mistakes (there was a lot of copy/pasting involved in creating this) or if you want to help fill in all the missing data to create a really complete resource. I only inputted the data I needed for this exact calculation, but it would be interesting to have a really complete data set.