For the second year in a row, public colleges and universities in Indiana will not raise tuition for in-state students.
Gov. Mike Braun and the state’s Commission for Higher Education ordered the two-year freeze in 2025, citing the need to make college more affordable.
“Indiana’s public institutions answered my call to find efficiencies and put students and their families first,” the Republican said in an Aug. 26 press release. “In Indiana, your higher education dollar stretches further.”
On the surface, that means students and families could save money. But experts say these policies are more complicated.
Here’s what a tuition freeze actually means for Indiana students and families, and for college affordability.
What is a tuition freeze?
Freezing tuition means that a college or university agrees not to raise tuition for a certain amount of time.
In Indiana’s case, that means public colleges can’t raise in-state tuition or fees until the 2027-28 school year.
Purdue University has not raised tuition rates since 2013, when former and interim university president Mitch Daniels took over.
How does my tuition work?
The tuition rate the college advertises is called the “sticker price,” or what people would pay if they didn’t get any financial aid, grants or scholarships.
Schools also generally charge mandatory fees, which is extra money on top of the sticker price tuition to cover things like student activities and campus technology.
Many college students don’t actually pay sticker price tuition. That’s especially true at private universities, which have higher tuition rates, but also tend to give out more financial aid, according to Dustin Weeden, an associate vice president at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.
About 64% of full-time undergraduate students at IU Indianapolis in the 2024-25 school year were given some kind of financial aid, according to university data.
When students receive financial aid, such as Pell Grants or state money like the Frank O’Bannon Grant, the university will subtract that funding from their outstanding tuition bill and charge students whatever remains. If there’s money left over, students receive that money as a refund.
Do tuition freezes make college more affordable?
So, does freezing tuition actually make college more affordable?
“It's a real strong, ‘it depends,’” said Dominique J. Baker, a professor of education at University of Delaware and higher education finance expert.
On the surface, students and families are paying less when tuition isn’t increasing. That’s true for students who are paying full tuition and those who receive some financial aid, because they will be left with less to pay once their aid is applied.
“The fact that tuition is not rising does provide at least a short-term benefit,” Weeden said.
Baker said you also have to consider whether financial aid is remaining steady. In 2024, the state cut its Frank O’Bannon Grants, Indiana’s main financial aid program, and kept those cuts in place for the 2026-27 school year.
When you’re receiving less financial aid, you may not notice the effects from a tuition freeze. That’s compounded by the fact that everything feels more expensive these days.
“People don't pay for college in a vacuum,” Baker said. “(If) it feels hard to be able to get that food on the table, to be able to pay for a car to get to work, then it's also going to feel hard to pay for college.”
How do tuition freezes affect schools?
Baker said providing an education to students does have a cost, and tuition is a major way colleges get revenue. But most often when states order a tuition freeze, they don’t also give more money to colleges to supplement that revenue loss.
“It is a rarity for that to happen,” Baker said. “Which then means that functionally, you are seeing a decrease in the amount of resources available to provide a quality education.”
In Indiana, the state did not add this supplemental funding for colleges in the last two-year budget, likely because the state cut $2 billion overall at the last minute in response to a bleak revenue forecast. Overall, funding for higher education in Indiana actually decreased by nearly $180 million between the 2023-25 and 2025-27 budget cycles.
Colleges have several routes to supplement lost revenue due to tuition freezes. They can increase other tuition rates, outside of what’s been frozen.
For example, IU Indianapolis has continued to increase out-of-state tuition incrementally over the last several years. Some schools will also occasionally increase international student tuition, though the Trump administration’s restrictions on international student visas have decreased the number of international students both in Indiana and at U.S. colleges overall.
Beyond increasing tuition, Weeden said, universities could look to cut in other areas, like eliminating faculty or staff positions.
What does the future hold?
Indiana public colleges can increase tuition starting next school year, unless the state orders another freeze.
But, experts say, tuition freezes are generally designed to be a temporary solution. When schools inevitably do increase tuition, it’s possible students could get an even higher bill than they would’ve without the freeze.
“One of the biggest concerns is there’s a strong trend that when you remove the freeze, the tuition rebounds up, and it's even higher than it would have been because it’s making up for lost time,” Baker said.
This article first appeared on Mirror Indy and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
