The University of Arkansas and the University of Missouri-Columbia have varying expenses from tuition to room and board, but the price tags truly diverge on the price of books and supplies.
The University of Arkansas set the price of its books and supplies at $1,278 in the 2012-2013 academic year. The next year, the price went up by one hundred dollars, but within the course of the next two academic years, the price dropped almost 22 percent from the 2012-2013 price ending up with a grand total of exactly one thousand dollars for the 2015-2016 year.
At Columbia, the opposite trend occurred. From the 2012-2013 year to the 2015-2016 year, the price of books and supplies rose at a fairly consistent rate, the only major hike was the addition of almost $170 between the of near 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school years. The final price during the 2015-2016 school year was 21 percent more than the 2012-2013 price.
The UA price break on books and supplies may have been especially appreciated by the out-of-state students, who saw an 18 percent increase in tuition from 2012-2013 to 2015-2016. This increase gains effect when compared with the almost 7 percent gain by out-of-state students at Columbia.
Though out-of-state students’ tuition rose significantly at the UofA, the total expenses between in- and out-of-state students is relatively equitable. In-state students paid almost 64 percent of what out of state student paid, as compared to the Columbia in-state students who paid nearly 61 percent of what out-of-state student paid.
Your spreadsheet was excellent. Good formatting and easy to follow.
On the lede, describe the main total first: Missouri is far more expensive for out of state students than Arkansas, while in-state students pay close to the same rates. That is the big dollar trend, the go into the differences on books.