LANSING – Michigan colleges and university tuition and fees put the state as the sixth highest on average in the U.S., data released from the College Board showed, but the data also showed that Michigan schools got some of the lowest overall public support on a per capita basis in the nation.

And the data also showed that, while in the last five years tuition and fees at Michigan universities had increased by 20 percent, that was less than the national average of 27 percent increases in the previous five years.

The fact that tuition has increased less in Michigan than nationwide over the last five years may be partly due to tuition restraint provisions the Legislature has included in the annual higher education budget.

But a report issued this week by the Senate Fiscal Agency suggests other universities may begin to do what Wayne State University did this year – ignore the restraints and face cuts in state assistance – because the overall cuts in state aid to the colleges and universities has fallen by 21.7 percent over the past decade.

The data that looked at how Michigan universities compared to the nation was released online by the New York City-based organization last week, though most news outlets only picked up on the information on Wednesday.

The data, part of an overall report – Trends in College Pricing 2013 – on college tuition and other costs and public funding for universities, showed that for the year the average college tuition increased by 2.9 percent nationwide for the 2013-14 school year.

That is the lowest average increase for tuition costs in 30 years, the College Board said, and followed an increase average of 4.5 percent in 2012-13 and 8.5 percent in 2011-12.

Over the past five years, the total percentage increase in tuitions for four-year public universities ranged from 5 percent in Missouri to 70 percent for Arizona schools.

Increases for two-year schools tended to be higher, though increases in Maine and North Dakota only went up by 1 percent. But in California tuition and fees for two-year schools increased by 111 percent during the past five years.

In Michigan, tuition and fees for community colleges increased by 23 percent during the past five years.

The national average for increased tuition and fees at two-year schools was 29 percent.

In terms of the average total cost of tuition and fees for students, Michigan stood as the sixth highest for four-year schools with an average at $11,600 a year.

New Hampshire schools were the highest at $14,655 a year. Wyoming schools were the lowest at $4,404. Nationwide the average was $8,893.

Besides New Hampshire, the states where college costs were higher than Michigan were Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois.

The study also selected a “flagship” university for each state to compare costs. For Michigan that school was tagged as the University of Michigan, where the average $14,677 in tuition and fees for in-state students was fifth highest in the nation (it also showed that tuition and fees had increased by 25 percent at U-M during the past five years.

Pennsylvania State University had the highest overall tuition and fees for in-state students at $17,926 The University of Wyoming was the lowest at $4,404.

In terms of public support for universities, and their students, on a per capita basis, Michigan ranked the fourth lowest in the nation, the report showed.

The state paid just paid just $4.33 per every $1,000 in personal income in public support, meaning the average public support per student was $3,962.

The national average, on the other hand, was $6,646.

Alaska had the highest per capita support at $17,253. New Hampshire had the lowest at $2,482.

Mike Boulus, executive director of the Presidents Council, State Universities of Michigan, said there was no mystery as to why state tuition and costs had gone up and that was because the state had cut back on public support over the last decade so dramatically.

“It is almost a perfectly symmetrical inverse relationship between state aid and tuition,” he said. “When state aid increases, tuition and fees are almost flat.”

Boulus pointed to the SFA report as an indicator of how universities have coped and what they may face in the future.

The report said that since 2001-02 state aid for higher education had fallen by more than $350 million, or 21.7 percent.

“The ability of the state to constrain tuition increases in the future will depend on the overall level of State funding for higher education and the universities’ ability to generate more funds by increasing tuition,” the report said.

INTERNATIONAL RANKINGS: U-M and Michigan State University both continued to be ranked as among the top 100 universities in the world, according to the Times of London. U-M stood at 12th among those schools – which were topped by Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Britain’s Cambridge University – and MSU was tied with several other schools in the 70s ranks.

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