This report uses data from the Integrated Postsecondary Educations Data System (IPEDS) to examine median prices of attendance, financial aid, and net prices for first-time, full-time, degree/certificate-seeking undergraduates over the period 1999–2000 to 2001–02. To capture the interaction between price of attendance and financial aid patterns over time and to take into account inflation during this period, indices of changes in three different types of prices—tuition, price of attendance, and net price—were developed for this report. The major findings of the study are that during this period, both the median price of attendance and the median value of total aid increased as a faster rate than inflation at public 4-year institutions, private not-for-profit, 4-year institutions, and private for-profit, less-than-4-year institutions. However, as a result of financial aid, net prices did not rise as rapidly as price of attendance. At public 2-year institutions, net prices not only increased at a slower rate than did sticker prices, but they also increased at a slower rate than inflation. The analysis of the price indices confirmed that examining different types of prices and net prices may lead to different conclusions. In all institutional sectors, increases in median tuition and fee levels and in price of attendance tended to be greater than increases in net prices. In most sectors, median net prices increased at a slower rate than did price of attendance over the three-year period reviewed in this report. In the public 2-year sector, net prices increased at a slower rate than inflation or even decreased.
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