VaHigherEd.com

The Daily Press of Newport News has written another story on the true tuition and fees at Virginia’s Community Colleges and the erroneous numbers published by the College Board.

This is a follow up to the Daily Press’s original story.   

The stories, which claim that Virginia community college tuition is up 8% and the commonwealth’s four-year institutions have increased tuition by 7%, are all based on this press release from the nonprofit College Board.  The release is based on the College Board’s Annual Survey, which includes this disclaimer on page 15:

Data on individual states should be interpreted with caution because of the possible impact of reporting errors and missing data.

That’s a helpful disclaimer because the numbers they report for tution and fees at Virginia’s Community Colleges are inaccurate.  Those rates are established by the State Board for Community Colleges and were last set in March.

Further, the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) is required by state law to accurately report the tuition of all of Virginia’s public colleges and universities.  They did that over the summer.  You can read their news release, or actually read the entire report, which includes this in it’s key findings:

The average (mean) increase for in-state undergraduate tuition and mandatory E&G fees from 2006-07 to 2007-08 is 6.4% at four-year institutions, 5.3% at two-year institutions (6.0% at the VCCS) and 6.3% at all institution levels.

Posted by Jeff Kraus