Indiana’s public colleges and universities are pulling back the curtain on what it actually costs to run individual degree programs — but state officials cautioned that the new data raises as many questions as it answers.
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education on Wednesday unveiled newly required institutional reports detailing the cost to operate academic programs across seven institutions and multiple campuses statewide. The data release was prompted by a sweeping 2024 law aimed in part at increasing transparency around higher education spending.
The reports — now publicly available through the commission’s online dashboard — break down estimated annual costs, student enrollment and per-student expenses for programs or departments, depending on how each school chose to report the data.
Those costs vary dramatically at some campuses, from less than $8,000 per student in certain programs to more than $50,000 in others, according to the new reports. Other metrics additionally vary depending on the academic discipline, individual program enrollment and how institutions calculated expenses.
State officials emphasized repeatedly, however, that the figures reflect what institutions spend to offer programs — not what students pay.
“The focus for us is affordability and ensuring that Hoosiers have access and affordability to higher education, and part of how we think about affordability is making sure that, yes, we’re delivering high quality education at our institutions, but we’re also doing it efficiently,” said Cody Robison, the commission’s deputy chief financial officer. “We have an interest in seeing this data, in looking at it, and partnering with our institutions to figure out what to do next.”
A new look at costs
The reporting requirement stems from legislation passed in 2024 that created a set of annual data submissions from public colleges and universities. In total, institutions must report 13 different program-level metrics, including: enrollment, degree completions, faculty and staffing levels, costs to operate programs, student debt and post-graduation salary data.
The cost data is now in its second year of collection and includes information from fiscal years 2024 or 2025, depending on each institution’s accounting timeline. State guidance allows institutions to report data from any of the previous three fiscal years.
Commission leaders said Wednesday the goal is twofold: improving transparency, and helping policymakers and institutions better understand “efficiency” in delivering higher education.
“We want Hoosiers at home to know what’s going on at their higher ed institutions,” Robison said. “And we also want to provide strong tools for decision-makers.”
But rather than a single, standardized format, colleges were allowed to choose from three different approaches to calculate and present costs. That flexibility, Robison noted, complicates school-to-school comparisons.
Some institutions, including Indiana State University, Indiana University and Ivy Tech Community College, reported costs at the degree-program level, pairing specific majors and degree types with expenses and enrollment.
Others — Purdue University, Ball State University and Vincennes University — reported costs by “cost center,” such as an academic department, grouping expenses across multiple programs.
The University of Southern Indiana separately submitted data based on an existing cost study via a third reporting option intended to reduce duplication of work.
“There was not a one-size-fits-all solution yet for getting this data reported to the commission,” Robison said.
What the data shows
At Indiana State University, for example, the annual cost to operate programs ranged from roughly $7,400 per student in fields like public administration to more than $30,000 per student in various engineering, literature and history programs, according to the school’s fiscal year 2025 data.
Health-related programs showed more moderate costs at the Terre Haute campus, including about $10,500 per student in health professions.
At Purdue University Northwest, which reported costs by academic department, disparities were greater. The university’s math and statistics programs cost more than $40,000 per full-time-equivalent student, compared to roughly $6,500 per student in engineering and biological sciences programs.
Other departments fell in between, like chemistry and physics at about $29,000 per student.
Meanwhile, data from the University of Southern Indiana showed some smaller certificate and specialized programs with significantly higher per-student costs, including more than $56,000 per student for a computer information systems certificate program with just a handful of full-time-equivalent students enrolled in the reporting year.
Indiana University’s submission showed that about 92% of its degree programs fall between $8,000 and $50,000 per student. Most programs cluster within a broad middle range, while a smaller share of outliers drive the highest and lowest costs.
At the flagship Bloomington campus, many programs reportedly cost around $25,000 per student, while several bachelor’s-level music programs approached $37,000, for example, and professional programs, like a doctorate of optometry, exceed $130,000 per student.
CHE officials emphasized that such figures can be skewed when programs serve fewer students or rely on fixed instructional costs spread across small cohorts.
All institutions were required to include faculty and staff compensation tied to instruction and research based on national accounting standards set by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. But other costs — such as student services, administrative support or facilities — were optional.
As a result, some schools reported broader expenses than others.
The reports also do not include revenue, funding sources or detailed expense breakdowns, which limits how the data can be interpreted, Robison said.
“It would not be fair to say … this is a cost to the state via appropriations, or that this is all tuition, or all tuition fees,” he continued. “We don’t indicate that.”
Limitations — for now
Because of those differences, CHE board member Mike Alley was blunt.
“I think to compare and contrast between the institutions, it truly is impossible, because they’re all doing it a little bit differently,” he said. “Not only are the accounting systems and the control systems different — but quite frankly, their missions are all different, too. To compare Indiana University to Indiana State or Ball State or University of Southern Indiana, you’re not going to get relevant information.”
Alley further described the reporting effort as a complex “cost accounting exercise,” cautioning that without a national industry standard for cost accounting for higher education, “apples-to-apples comparisons” remain out of reach.
“It’s very easy to think, ‘Oh, if I just knew this, I would be able to extrapolate,’” Alley said. “That’s not necessarily the case.”
And even within institutions, costs can appear distorted.
Departments that teach high-volume “service courses” — such as introductory biology or English, for example — might appear more expensive because they serve students from many majors, while their costs are not fully distributed across those programs.
Similarly, faculty salaries vary widely by discipline, research expectations and rank, further affecting cost calculations, Robison added.
New or recently launched programs might also be missing from the data entirely.
A starting pointDespite the limitations, state officials framed the reports as a foundational step toward more informed decision-making about higher education spending and affordability.
Alley said the real value of early data reporting might be internal — giving university leaders and boards a clearer understanding of their own cost structures.
“The key is that each institution is doing this process within the confines of their own systems,” he said.
Robison said the commission’s plan, for now, is to continue working with Hoosier colleges and universities to refine reporting methods and potentially move toward more standardization — although that process could require future changes to campus financial systems.
He encouraged policymakers and the public to treat the first round of data as a starting point for deeper inquiry.
“When I find something, I’m not necessarily uncovering a truth,” he said. “I am finding an opportunity to ask more questions.”
This story has been updated to correctly attribute quotes to CHE board member Mike Alley, not board chair Dennis Bland.
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