Which School Has The Most Expensive College Tuition In 2023?

You don’t need to tell anyone that college is expensive nowadays. Whether it’s parents or their student children, everyone in America knows that attending college is an incredibly costly prospect. Each year it seems tuition rates across all types of colleges continue to rise. On top of this, overall national average tuition numbers hide just how expensive college tuition can be at popular and more selective private liberal arts colleges.

In order to discern which colleges have the most expensive tuition costs, Credit Karma conducted a study to determine the average cost of tuition and required fees at four-year public and four-year not-for-profit private colleges and universities that award bachelor’s degrees.

Read on to find out what school has the most expensive college tuition for the academic year 2022-2023.

The Most Expensive College Tuition in 2022-2023

Examining hundreds of public and private four-year colleges and universities across the United States revealed which one has the most expensive college tuition going into the 2022-2023 academic year. Along with the Credit Karma study, another conducted by BrokeScholar found that, through a quirk in how the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the most expensive college tuition is for an accelerated Bachelor of Nursing Science program at the MGH Institute of Health Professionals, with a cost of $91,644 for tuition and required fees. However, though considered the most expensive college tuition, the $91,644 covers the entire program, but the program lasts just a bit around a year — thus, the NCES considers this tuition rate an annual rate.

Otherwise, the school with the most expensive college tuition is Columbia University, which with tuition and required fees (for example, excluding waivable student health insurance provided by the school) is $69,986 per year in the 2022-2023 academic year.

States With the Highest Average Tuition and the Lowest Average Tuition

It is interesting to look at which states have the highest and lowest average tuition costs, because they may not be what you expected. It turns out, the most expensive college tuition, on average, can be found in little old Vermont. Taking together the cost of tuition for in-state and out-of-state students at a public four-year college as well as the cost of tuition for not-for-profit private four-year colleges, the average tuition cost in Vermont is the highest in the U.S. at $38,525. Some of the main culprits pushing up the average tuition cost in Vermont include Landmark College, Middlebury College, and Bennington College.

On the other hand, the state with the cheapest average tuition cost is Idaho. Once again, taking together the cost of tuition for in-state and out-of-state students at a public four-year college as well as the cost of tuition for not-for-profit private four-year colleges, the average tuition cost in Idaho is $11,287. Idaho has the lowest average college tuition cost in part due to its large number of public colleges, which have low rates of tuition for in-state students; included in this factor is Brigham Young University’s Idaho campus, which has very low tuition costs for members of the Church of the Latter-day Saints and, even if students are not members of that church, the school still offers comparatively cheap tuition.

Another major factor impacting the average tuition cost in America is the type of degree you are pursuing. For instance, the average tuition cost for an undergraduate degree can be quite different from the average tuition cost for a graduate degree. But though a graduate degree is, by definition, a higher level of academic degree than an undergraduate bachelor’s degree, many colleges have cheaper graduate degree tuition. For a full breakdown of average tuition costs by state, degree type, and public versus private schools, check out the Credit Karma study.