Public four-year
State universities, where in-state tuition is usually the largest single discount available to anybody.
- $520Institutions of this kind on this site
- $24,936Median published cost of attendance, a year
- $14,459Median net price for students receiving federal aid
- $9,838Median in-state tuition and fees
- $20,798Median out-of-state tuition and fees
- $20,903Median debt of borrowers who completed
- $53,263Median earnings ten years after entry
The gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition at a public four-year is often larger than the entire tuition bill at a community college. Residency rules are set by the state, not by the institution, and they generally require a year of domicile for reasons other than education.
Published cost includes housing and food, which for a student living at home is not a cost they will pay. Net price is the more useful figure and it is on every institution page here.
What these medians are
Medians across the $520 institutions of this kind in the committed snapshot, computed here rather than published by anybody. A median is used rather than a mean because a handful of very expensive institutions pull an average somewhere no real student pays.
The net price figure is the Department's, and it covers first-time, full-time undergraduates receiving federal aid only. It is not the average across everybody.
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.