What it costs to attend
Published cost of attendance and net price for 2,434 American institutions, and tuition by province and field of study across Canada. Both come straight from the government datasets, with the year they describe on every figure.
By kind of institution
United States
Public four-year
State universities, where in-state tuition is usually the largest single discount available to anybody.
United States
Community college
Public two-year institutions, where tuition is a fraction of a four-year and the transfer path is the thing to get right.
United States
Private, not for profit
Where the published price and the price people actually pay diverge most, because institutional aid does most of the work.
United States
Private, for profit
The sector where borrower defence and closed school discharge claims concentrate, and where the numbers deserve the most scrutiny.
Canada
Canadian university
Where the domestic and international price are different products, and the gap has grown every year for a decade.
Canada
Canadian college and polytechnic
Diploma and applied-degree institutions, largely outside the survey that produces the national tuition figures.
By institution and by province
$2,434 American institutions
Published cost of attendance, tuition in and out of state, and the net price the Department reports for students receiving federal aid.
Canadian tuition by province
Undergraduate and graduate tuition by province and by field of study, for Canadian and international students. The national undergraduate average is $7,734.00.
Published cost is not what most people pay
The published cost of attendance is a sticker price: tuition, fees, housing, food, books and an allowance for everything else. Net price, after grants and scholarships that do not have to be repaid, is what a household actually faces, and at many private institutions the two are startlingly far apart.
The Department's net price figure has a real limitation worth knowing. It covers first-time, full-time undergraduates who receive federal aid, and nobody else. It is not the average across all students, and it is not comparable between sectors without care.
Sources
- College Scorecard, most recent institution-level data, U.S. Department of Education. Figures describe 2025-26. Collected automatically on , so nobody checked this row by hand.
- Tuition and Living Accommodation Costs survey (record 3123), Statistics Canada. Figures describe 2025/2026. Collected automatically on , so nobody checked this row by hand.