College is unaffordable for many Americans — but don’t just blame rising tuition

Private U.S. colleges and universities are charging an average of $44,961 in tuition for the 2025-26 school year. (Photo by Catherine Lane/Moment via Getty Images)

As more Americans consider whether a college degree is worth it, the rising cost of attending a college or university is often at the forefront of their minds.

The average college tuition more than tripled between 1980 and 2022. Most of that increase appeared after 2000.

When adding in housing, food, books and other costs, the total amount to attend Brown University, Tulane University, the University of Richmond, Williams College and other schools can easily rise to $100,000 per year for those who don’t get scholarships or financial aid.

Why has a college degree become akin to an unaffordable luxury for millions of Americans?

I am a scholar of the history of higher education. My data analysis of college tuition trends from 1840 to 2020 shows that college tuition has not significantly risen since 1990, at least compared to tuition changes over the previous decades.

In fact, after a period of extraordinarily high tuition growth from 1920 to 1990, tuition growth slowed in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

But that’s likely little comfort to American families shocked at the sticker price of college costs. This is especially true because since 1980 the growth in real median family income has been relatively modest, while college tuition has continued to rise faster than inflation.

 

Rising tuition, more loans

High tuition has contributed to more than half of all undergraduate students in 2025 taking on student loans. In 1995 and 1996, by comparison, about 25% of undergraduate students had student loan debt.

Cumulative student loan debt rose from about $500 billion in 2006 to nearly $1.8 trillion in 2024.

Student loan debt can prevent college graduates from purchasing their own homes or cars, as well as making other decisions in adulthood, such as whether to marry or have children. Total student loan debt accounted for 7.1% of borrowers’ annual income in 2024, compared to 4.6% in 2006.

There is no shortage of policy proposals for reducing college costs, ranging from freezing tuition to canceling student debt.

But all available statistics about the evolution of tuition capture only the growth of tuition since 1963.

 

Tuition over time

To fill this data void, I collected data about the origins and evolution of tuition charges at American colleges from 1840 to 2020. I’m working to create the very first national database of college tuition that charts its entire history.

This database, which I am working to publish in an academic journal, comprises tuition data in 10-year increments for 667 private and public colleges and universities — representing 64% of all colleges and universities established before 1920.

Using this data, I recently published an article on the origins and evolution of college tuition in the journal History of Universities.

Tuition rates were essentially flat in inflation-adjusted terms for seven decades, from 1840 to 1910. The annual average tuition rate fluctuated between $41 and $59, equivalent to between $1,586 and $2,194 today.

In many cases, college students did not pay their own tuition bills. Rather, their future employers or the community where they expected to serve as teachers or ministers footed the bill.

Some colleges did not even charge tuition. The number of colleges that offered tuition-free education climbed from one in 1840 to 119 in 1910. In 1910, about 20% of universities — or 100 public schools and 19 private schools — did not charge their students any tuition. These schools included Stanford University, Howard University and Oregon State University.

While many 19th-century colleges were generally populated by poor students who were trained as ministers or teachers, early 20th-century colleges prepared students from rich families for professional careers as lawyers, medical doctors and other high-earning professions.

Influential donors such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. argued that these students could and should pay for their education. And he convinced college administrators that students from wealthy families went to college because they wanted to have a good time and because they wanted to make money after graduation.

The 1920s and 1930s subsequently saw a race among college administrators about who could raise tuition fees faster. These tuition increases were primarily not a response to financial needs but a response to the fact that college students increasingly came from richer families.

 

A shift in tuition

In the 1920s and 30s a consensus emerged among donors, college administrators and state legislators that students should be asked to pay for their education.

Tuition grew steadily by about 150% to 190% every 10 years, from the 1920s to the 1950s, in numbers not adjusted for inflation. Then, the 1960s and 1970s experienced a growth of about 220% in each decade. The 1980s was the decade of the highest growth in my study, with a 241% increase over the 10-year time frame.

In the 1990s tuition growth began to slow and dropped to 180% over the decade. By the 2010s, tuition growth had fallen to 142%, which represented the lowest growth level since the 1910s.

 

Tuition kept rising, but wages did not