College tuition in the United States

College tuition in the United States is the privately borne cost of higher education collected by educational institutions in the United States, excluding the portion that is paid through taxes or from other government funds as supply-side subsidies to colleges and universities, or demand-side subsidies to students, or that is paid from university endowment funds or gifts through scholarships or grants.

Tuition has increased as the value, quality, and quantity of education has increased. These increases have occasionally been controversial. College attendance increased dramatically after World War II with the introduction of the GI bill and greater federal funding for higher education.

University based research was believed to have played a critical role in determining the outcome of WWII, and was believed to be essential for success in the cold war. With the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union, many feared that the United States was falling behind on science and technology because it relied on private wealth to fund higher education, whereas the Soviet system was believed to be generously publicly funded, more meritocratic, and more closely tied to the needs of the economy and the military. Many families were unable to borrow sufficient funds to finance a high quality education for their children, and to thereby increase their children's earning capacity and standard of living, until after the introduction of federal student loans. As public subsidies fell and costs and quality of education increased, loans played an increasingly important role in higher education finance. Except for its military academies, the U.S. federal government does not directly operate and control higher education institutions. Instead it offers loans, grants, tax subsidies and research contracts. Land grants date back to the Morrill Act during the U.S. Civil War and direct grants to students date back to the "G.I. Bill" programs implemented after World War II.

The United States has one of the most expensive higher education systems in the world, and also one of the most successful in terms of the boost to earnings from higher education. Public colleges have no control over one major revenue source — the state. In 2012-13, the average cost of annual tuition in the United States ranged from $3,131 for public two-year institutions (community colleges) to $29,056 for private four-year institutions. Private colleges increased their tuition by an average of 3.9 percent in 2012-13, the smallest rise in four decades, according to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

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