USC to increase tuition by 5% in 2023-24


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Undergraduate students returning for the 2023-24 academic year will be paying an increased cost in tuition, with fees climbing by 5% — the same percentage increase as last year.

This brings tuition up to $66,640 for two semesters of study, breaking the previous record of $63,468 that the University had set just last year. Adjusted for inflation, tuition has increased 2.7%. This, combined with other services that have also seen rises including housing, dining and transportation, has brought the expected cost of attendance up more than $5,200 to $90,921. 

Several elite private universities, including Stanford University, Duke University and Georgetown University, have also hiked tuition fees, with a pattern emerging for increases of 4% or higher for the upcoming academic year. 

“Like other universities across the country, inflation is impacting our costs,” the University wrote in a statement to the Daily Trojan Wednesday. “Tuition is the largest source of the university’s academic operating budget, which pays for teaching, student services, facilities and administrative support.”

The University expects to increase its financial aid pool by 7%, building on the more than $814 million total awarded last year, including work-study funds and loans.

        

Based on University data and financial reports. This is an updated version of a Daily Trojan graph from 2016, with added data for the 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic years.

Methodology

For inflation-adjusted data, the Daily Trojan collected data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose Consumer Price Index statistics for college tuition were then calculated as a yearly aggregate from February of the previous year to January of that year. January 2023 is the latest date posted for CPI statistics on tuition. The earliest data available is from 1979.

The data shown operates on the assumption that, when deciding on a tuition figure, the University had inflation data at its disposal for January of that year at the latest. The only clear exceptions the Daily Trojan was able to note was for the pandemic-affected years of 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23, when the University announced its tuition in May or April.

Based on the aggregate, the Daily Trojan then calculated the ratio between present-day CPI and that year’s CPI, then multiplied the actual tuition fees by the result.

For example, for inflation-adjusted tuition for the 2022-23 academic year, the Daily Trojan calculated aggregate CPI from February 2023 to January 2024, as the base. Then it divided the figure by the aggregate CPI from February 2022 to January 2023. The resulting ratio was then multiplied by the actual tuition fees of 2022-23 to give an inflation-adjusted figure for that year.

For the 2021-22 academic year, the same base was used, but was divided by the aggregate CPI from February 2021 to January 2022 for the resulting ratio to be multiplied by the actual tuition fees to give an inflation-adjusted figure for that year, and so on.