Cost Comparison: Colonial Private Versus Flagship Public Universities in the United States

Abstract

In the United States of America, the increasing cost of tuition (i.e., fee for teaching) has engendered national debate regarding the worth of a higher education especially when considering total cost and student debt in light of potential earnings (e.g., Ponton, 2024). Especially high are the tuition fees at colonial universities (i.e., those founded before the American Revolution in the late 18th century) that operate today as private institutions (i.e., without direct, budgeted support via state appropriations) supported heavily by large endowments. Fortunately, both private and public universities engage in widespread tuition discounting (Moody, 2025) that reduces the actual tuition fee and, thus, total cost of attendance to levels typically unbeknownst by the general public but that the U.S. government makes publicly available via the online College Scorecard. The purpose of this article was to compare the colonial private universities to their respective state’s flagship (i.e., most highly esteemed and state-supported public) universities using various metrics one of which being total cost of attendance. Both colonial private and flagship universities tend to be prestigious and highly esteemed; thus, cost may be a major factor in student selection particularly for academically talented prospective students. The findings reveal that to a pervasive extent, attending a colonial private university is equally if not more affordable than attending a flagship university for students who reside in the respective colonial private university’s state.