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%.
The table below compares the rates that will be used in the 2014 evaluation to those that were included in the 2013 report. The inflation rate was decreased from 3.0% to 2.6% based on historical data and expected future economic conditions. The nominal investment return was lowered slightly from 7.75% to 7.65%. These two changes resulted in an increase in the real rate of return from 4.61% to 4.92%. The SBA has an internal goal of 5.0% real rate of return, which is consistent with these adopted assumptions.