National policy · Finance, funding and sustainability · United States
House education chair asks GAO to examine how public universities price graduate degrees
Tim Walberg, who chairs the US House Education and Workforce Committee, wants the Government Accountability Office to study how public universities decide graduate tuition and fees.
Why it matters: Public universities that receive federal and state money would be the focus of the requested GAO study of how graduate charges are decided.
Tim Walberg, chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, wrote to Orice Williams Brown, Acting Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), asking it to study how public universities decide graduate charges, the committee said.
The committee said loans to graduate students represent about half of all federal student lending, a portfolio it put at US$1.7 trillion.
As an example, the letter points to a California public university where yearly charges for 2026–2027 range from roughly US$23,000 on some non-professional graduate courses up to US$94,000 for an MBA.
GAO is asked to look at what shapes graduate pricing, such as running costs, demand from applicants, the pay graduates are expected to earn and the availability of federal aid, and to compare in-state with out-of-state charges.
Editor’s view
Richard Davies, Policy and Finance Editor
If GAO takes up the request, public universities funded by federal and state taxpayers could be asked to explain how costs, demand, expected graduate pay and federal aid feed into the fees they set for graduate programmes.
What to watch
- Whether GAO takes up the request and when it reports its findings on graduate pricing at public universities.
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