Costs and Financial Aid. The cost of attendance is the total amount of tuition, fees, room and board, books, supplies, and other estimated school expenses. Financial aid is a combination of grants, loans, scholarships, and work-study employment designed to help offset the total cost of attendance.
One of the major problems for an investor looking at that 10% average return figure and mistakenly expecting to realize a nice yearly profit from investing in the S&P 500 is inflation. Adjusted for inflation, the historical average annual return is only around 7%.
Based on these years, the long-term (invested since 1990 or earlier) average annual historical real (after inflation) return on stocks has been approximately 6% to 7%. Looking at shorter terms such as in the 13.5 years since 2000 or the 5.5 years since the start of 2008, stocks have had poor annual returns.