PNPI Explorer Blog – Connecticut
Welcome back to the PNPI Explorer blog series, where we examine higher education data in different states. This week’s spotlight is on Connecticut.
In 2021 in Connecticut, there were 38 institutions serving 138,037 full-time equivalent (FTE) students. By using the Explorer’s Comparison Tool, we can examine how Connecticut fares against other states on college cost. In terms of cost of attendance, Connecticut has the fourth highest average among all states and Washington D.C. at $43.6K. Other New England states are clustered near Connecticut at the top of the distribution.
Our College Cost report can help us parse out why Connecticut’s cost of attendance is as high as it is. When we look at cost of attendance by institutional sector, we see that private non-profit institutions are clearly driving much of the high cost, with an average of $67K in cost of attendance (among 15 non-profits). By comparison, students at Connecticut’s nine public four-year institutions can expect a cost of $27.7K (a 59% lower cost) and students at the 12 public two-year institutions can expect a cost of $12.8K.
Despite these high costs, Connecticut institutions are particularly generous with their institutional grant aid to students. In fact, when looking at the average tuition discount rate, Connecticut institutions provide the most grant aid to students relative to their tuition prices. On average, Connecticut institutions offset their tuition costs by 41.2% using grant aid, more than 12 percentage points higher than the national average.
Find something interesting about Connecticut that you would like to share with us? Drop us a note via our feedback page or discuss your findings on LinkedIn! Check back next week when we explore data insights about Delaware.
