A popular meme right now is how the cost of college is soaring, and how universities are making out like bandits, which puzzles a lot of faculty, since they know that they aren’t getting rich and the cost of running a college is mainly in the salaries.

I recently came across a document with figures explaining the situation. First let’s look at the state funding plus tuition for all public colleges in the US over the past 25 years.

Note that the funding (tuition+state funding) has varied from a low of $10,200 in 1993 to a high of $12,766 in 2011($11,483 ± 11%). There is fluctuation, but not much, and no clear trend. Public college costs have been remarkably stable over the last 25 years. What has changed is who pays those costs. In 1986, about 23% of the funding was from tuition, and in 2011, about 43% of the funding was from tuition. Essentially all the change in tuition can be attributed to differences in state funding.

The situation in California is even starker:

Note that California costs are much lower than in most states, largely because of the very cost-effective community college system. Costs in constant dollars vary from $8,286/FTE in 2005 to $9,970 in 1998 ($9,128±9%)—again, remarkably stable over 25 years. The share coming from tuition has changed from 11% in 1986 to 27% in 2011 (though the low was 9% in 1989). Once again, the story is not that colleges have gotten more expensive, but that the nearly constant cost has been transferred from the state to the students.