At the University of Virginia, where prices were little changed last year, tuition and fees for state residents who pay in full are up nearly 6% for the coming school year, to about $20,350. Howard University’s sticker price, after a similar pause, has risen more than 7%, to about $31,050.

These schools, one public and one private, underline the new inflation-fueled reality for many college students: The price freezes and other unusual bargains that coincided with the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic are over.

Colleges and universities across the country, squeezed by sharply rising labor and supply costs, are taking steps to fortify their revenue and resume their pre-pandemic patterns of annual tuition increases. These price hikes, for the most part, do not appear to be as high as the overall national inflation rate measured at 8.5% in July.

But they are substantial — often in the range of 3 to 4%, sometimes more. For many students and parents, that means significantly higher college bills in the fall term. The pocketbook bite, felt all the more keenly alongside higher prices for groceries, gas and rent, is sowing fresh fears about the affordability of higher education.

Tia Pitts, 19, a Howard sophomore who is majoring in broadcast journalism, said the list of expenses she faced before classes resume at the Washington D.C. university led to a panic attack.

“I kind of shut down thinking about all of the financial responsibilities,” Harris said. “I have to spend more money for housing. I have to buy more things for the room. It’s just a lot and that’s not even including tuition.”

Some schools continue to freeze tuition. Purdue University in Indiana boasts that it has held in-state prices virtually constant — about $10,000 for base tuition and fees — for the past decade. Most public universities in Virginia complied this year with a request from Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin to freeze tuition.

U-Va., which set its rates in December, before Youngkin took office, did not. Full tuition and fees for a Virginian starting at the public flagship in Charlottesville are now estimated to be 5.8% more than the year before, according to university and federal data. The previous increase, for fall 2021, was 1.5%. Those figures don’t count room and board and other expenses. They also don’t include financial aid.

Youngkin said he is hopeful U-Va. will come around to his view on tuition in the next several months.

“If they don’t, I will be very disappointed,” the governor said in a recent interview. Youngkin said he is mindful of middle class families that barely miss qualifying for financial aid. “Those are the ones at the margins that are seeing the biggest impact from tuition increases,” he said. “That’s why we’re so focused on this.”

But analysts say such policies can force difficult trade-offs.

Phillip B. Levine, an economist at Wellesley College who has studied higher-education pricing, said tuition freezes are problematic for schools that aim to provide substantial grants to families with low-to-moderate income. The reason is that freezes limit revenue that could be used for financial aid. “The money has to come from somewhere,” Levine said. “And it needs to come from higher-income families.”

U-Va. has an expansive financial aid program, committing to meet the full demonstrated need of students through grants, scholarships, work-study and limited loans. That kind of pledge is rare for public universities. Tuition revenue helps to back it up.

“Nobody likes to raise tuition,” said Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis, U-Va.’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “It’s a balancing act, looking at all of the needs . . . and trying to make sure we can provide an excellent educational experience.”

Nationally, prices had remained nearly flat at the start of the pandemic as colleges scrambled to maintain enrollment amid widespread campus closures and a shift to virtual learning. Average tuition and fees inched up 1.2% for public universities in fall 2020 and 1.6% in fall 2021, according to the College Board. Those were the lowest increases, in percentage terms, since the 1970s. A similar pattern held for private colleges and universities, with increases of 1.1% in 2020 and 2.1% last year.

In the decade before the pandemic, College Board pricing data shows, a typical annual increase was around 3% in the public sector and 3.7% in the private sector. But prices sometimes rose much more: There was an 8.5% jump in average public university tuition and fees in fall 2011.

The recent national spike in consumer prices, with inflation reaching 9.1% in June, then subsiding somewhat last month, is disrupting the finances of higher education. Inflation can erode the value of endowments. Schools face higher costs for utilities, supplies and food. They are also under pressure to raise salaries to avoid losing faculty or staff to more lucrative jobs. Many universities reduced or froze faculty salaries at the start of the pandemic. Now payrolls are rising again.

Building maintenance, renovation and new construction are also more expensive now than colleges had planned. At the same time, federal pandemic relief that had helped support college and university budgets is winding down. It is unclear how long state funding for public higher education — a fiscal pillar that supports in-state tuition discounts — can hold steady.

“The inflationary and cost pressures are real,” said George Suttles, a higher-education expert at the asset management firm Commonfund. “Some colleges and universities are still trying to figure it out.”

No national data is yet available with detailed college prices for the coming year. But a Washington Post check of estimated costs of attendance for entering freshmen found an array of increases.

Among private universities in the District of Columbia, school and federal data shows, full tuition and mandatory fees rose 3.5% at Georgetown University, 3.9% at Catholic University, 4.2% at George Washington University, 4.9% at American University and 7.4% at Howard. School officials cited rising internal costs but said they continue to offer significant aid to students in need.

Experts emphasize that financial aid plays a major role in containing expenses for students and parents. Net prices — what students must pay after taking into account any grants or scholarships — matter more than sticker prices. In a time of rising concern about student debt, the net price determines whether or how much a student must borrow to go to college.

For every dollar Howard charges in tuition and fees, said the university’s chief financial officer, Stephen Graham, 47 cents are returned to students through scholarships and grants.

Graham said the university also is striving to strengthen its programs. “We’re investing in attracting and retaining the highest-quality faculty,” he said.

At the University of Maryland, an increase of 2.5% in tuition and fees for state residents was outpaced by a 9% jump in room and board. The estimated charge for campus meals and housing at College Park — $14,576 — is well ahead of the full price for in-state tuition and fees — $11,232. The university said higher room and board revenue is needed for renovations, maintenance, rising food costs and pay increases for housing and dining staff.

George Mason University, in Northern Virginia, joined U-Va. in raising its price. Its in-state tuition and fees rose 2.2%, to about $13,400. GMU’s governing board cited twin challenges: The university receives less state funding than comparable universities and faces an expensive labor market in the Washington D.C. region. “As a result, Mason faces an ongoing loss of talent in most units due to our inability to pay competitive wages, and is absorbing substantial unfunded inflationary increases in operating expenses,” the board said in a June 29 statement. But the board, in response to Youngkin’s request, promised to revisit tuition policy for the spring semester.

Elsewhere in the country, school and federal data shows, tuition and fees for entering in-state freshmen were up about 3% at the universities of Massachusetts and Michigan, about 4% at the universities of California at Berkeley and Minnesota and nearly 5% at the universities of Colorado and Connecticut. Oregon State University showed a 6% increase.

Purdue offered a counterpoint. Its president, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., announced a price freeze in 2013 and has kept to that policy ever since.

“Of course it can’t last forever,” Daniels said. “We just take it year to year. The day will come when there needs to be an adjustment. But it’s not soon.”

Purdue is not immune from inflationary pressures, Daniels said, but it has boosted revenue through growth in enrollment. It had 37,800 undergraduates last fall, about 25% more than it had in 2014.

Out-of-state students, who pay higher rates, account for nearly half of entering freshmen, a larger share than a decade ago. The university, like many others, also imposes fees for certain programs. Engineering and computer science, popular at Purdue, cost an additional $2,050 a year. That fee has not risen in recent years. Daniels said the university seeks to limit those charges too.

“We would like to keep this place as affordable as we can,” he said.

On one measure of college access, the university has not made progress. Federal data shows the share of Purdue freshmen whose family incomes were low enough to qualify for Pell grants was 14% in the 2020-21 school year, down from 19% in 2013-14.

The Pell share at U-Va. was also about 14% in 2020-21. At George Mason, it was about 30%.

Youngkin, explaining his request for a tuition freeze, said he believes large universities can hunt for — and find — ineffective programs and unneeded expenses. “If you want to keep costs down, you can find ways to do it,” he said. He also signaled that he is open to alternative pricing policies in the future. “This is not a forever discussion, [that] tuition can never be raised again,” he said.

The Virginia governor’s call for a tuition freeze resonated with Jenn Hart. She and her husband, who live in Midlothian, near Richmond, have three daughters, the eldest a rising sophomore at U-Va. Hart, 48, a real estate agent, said the family pays full tuition and is keenly aware of the expense every semester. To save money, she buys less meat these days at the grocery store. And she is mindful of future college bills. “It’s always in the back of my mind that there’s two more coming along,” she said.

Hart said she winced when she read that U-Va. declined Youngkin’s request for a freeze. “That really stung a little,” she said. But she added: “Do I think U-Va. is worth every penny? I do. I was surprised they wouldn’t do the freeze, but I will live with it.”

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