Best Values in Public Colleges
Our fifth ranking of 100 schools that offer academic excellence at an affordable price finds a familiar name at the top of the list. See if your state school is a contender.
By Kimberly Lankford, Contributing Editor
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, February 2006
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Talk about creative financing. The mortgage industry has nothing on public colleges and universities, which have used lottery tickets, T-shirts, baseball caps and private fundraisers to hold down costs and boost financial aid.
State budget crises pushed up average tuition and fees at four-year public colleges by 57% over the past five years, reports the College Board. At the same time, many colleges have cut financial aid, some by 20% to 40%.
But with an average annual tuition of $5,491, public colleges still beat the $21,235 tab you'd pay at a private school. And some of the best public colleges in the country now guarantee that students whose families earn less than $38,000 per year won't have to take out any loans. That includes the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which for the fifth straight time tops Kiplinger's list as the best value among the nation's public colleges and universities.
In addition, more states are luring top talent away from private colleges by giving a free ride to students with stellar SAT scores or a high school grade point average of 3.0 or higher. Fourteen states offer statewide merit scholarships, generally funded by lottery income, of which Georgia's HOPE scholarship is probably the best known.
Carolina green
In our exclusive survey, we identified the 100 schools that offer the best combination of high-quality academics and affordable costs. Top-ranked UNC has kept its price well below average -- charging about $4,600 for in-state tuition and fees in the 2005-06 academic year (and $12,029 per year when you add in room, board and books) -- while providing generous financial assistance. It's the only school in our survey that meets 100% of each student's financial need. (Need is the difference between a college's cost and the amount that formulas calculate a family can afford to pay.) It's more common for colleges to meet 80% of need or less.
Since our last survey in 2003, UNC has actually beefed up its financial aid. In fact, average debt per student at graduation has declined since our first comprehensive survey in 1998 ($11,519, versus $12,478 in 1998).
For the 2004 school year, UNC introduced its Carolina Covenant, under which it guaranteed to meet, without loans, 100% of the need for every accepted freshman whose family earns less than 150% of the federal poverty level. Since then, the universities of Virginia and Maryland, plus schools in a few other states, have introduced similar programs. In 2005, UNC expanded its covenant to include families earning 200% of the federal poverty level, or $37,700 for a family of four. That guarantee applies to students from any state. Almost 10% of the members of this year's freshman class are receiving aid under the covenant program, and almost half of those students are the first members of their families to get a college education.
One student who's benefiting is sophomore Nayeli Lozada, 20, who moved from Mexico City to Siler City, N.C., four years ago and graduated seventh in her high school class. Lozada says she always wanted to go to UNC, but even with a scholarship from her hometown, she didn't think she could afford Chapel Hill. Then she received an aid package worth about $14,000 a year, which allowed her to avoid taking out any loans.
Lozada was also part of a faculty mentoring program, which helped her "smooth out the transition and make the right choices." And because she didn't have to work full-time over the summer to pay for school, she was able to study Latin American political science at a university in Chile. She'd like to do research in Brazil next year, and to go to graduate school eventually to study international affairs. "People shouldn't be discouraged by the cost," says Lozada. "The help is there."