How are average tuition fees calculated?

by Baerbel Eckelmann

Tuition fees is one type of charge a student has to face in higher education. Tuition fees help to pay for the cost of running a higher education institution, such as salaries for teaching staff or maintaining buildings. There are various ways of calculating the average tuition fees, like: calculation of mean by program, calculation of mean by student, calculation of median and calculation of mode. For example:

a university offers 8 programs with yearly fees of:

MA1 3200, MA2 3200 MA3 3200, MBA 11300, MA4 4300, MA5 4800, MA6 3700, MA7 8200

Mean by student

Multiply the fee level by the number of students paying this fee level and then divide by the total number of students.

Mean by program

(do remove extreme outliers)Add up all yearly fees for each program offered and divide the sum by the number of programs. Should you offer particular programs with an exceptionally high fee, please exclude them from your calculation. This mainly applies to certain medical, law or business programs.Referring to the example this means: 3200+3200+3200+4300+4800+3700+8200 = 3060030600 /7 = 4371 The mean by program is: 4371

Median

The median indicates the centre of the distribution and is preferable in a distribution with outliers. Following the example above it would mean: Distribution: 3200 to 11300 All values in order: 3200+3200+3200+3700+4300+4800+8200+11300 3700+4300=8000/2=4000 The median is: 4000

Mode

The mode is the value that appears the most. In our example this would be: 3200 3200 3200 3200 3700 4300 4800 8200 11300