Is Financial Aid Keeping Up With Private School Costs? An Original Look at NAIS’s Own Survey Data
Direct answer: NAIS’s own three-wave parent survey (2013, 2018, 2023) shows financial aid participation climbing steadily, from 80% of families in 2013 to 88% in 2018, with roughly 9 in 10 relying on it by 2023. Parent stress about costs climbed too: from 47% in 2018 to 55% in 2023, as satisfaction fell.
Most “private school is getting expensive” coverage leans on a single headline tuition figure. NAIS has actually surveyed the same population of parents about how they pay for it three separate times, in 2013, 2018, and 2023. We pulled all three waves instead of citing just the newest one.
What NAIS Actually Asked, Three Times
The survey has run in 2006, 2013, 2018, and most recently in 2023 (published as the 2024 report), each time to a fresh, randomly selected sample of roughly 1,900 to 2,000 parents. One scope detail worth being upfront about: participants are drawn from families who had already completed a financial-aid application (the Parents’ Financial Statement, run through Community Brands’ School and Student Services program), not a random sample of all private-school parents. This is a survey of families already in the financial-aid pipeline, which matters for how to read the trend below: it likely understates how “optional” aid feels to this specific population, since everyone surveyed had already applied for it.
More Families Are Leaning on Aid, Wave Over Wave
| Wave | Cited financial aid as a funding source |
|---|---|
| 2013 | 80% |
| 2018 | 88% |
By 2023, NAIS’s own report describes the pattern differently but points the same direction: “nine out of ten parents cited financial aid as the primary funding source.” That’s a related finding, not a strictly identical metric to the 80%/88% figures above (those measure aid mentioned as a funding source; the 2023 figure measures aid as the primary one), so we’re not forcing all three years onto one bar chart. Read together, both versions of the question move the same way: aid went from something most families used to something nearly all of them now build the decision around.
The Share Getting Serious Aid Nearly Doubled
Among the same survey population, the share receiving $25,000 or more in aid jumped from 12% in 2013 to 21% in 2018, a genuinely large five-year shift in how much money is actually changing hands, not just how many families apply. We could not find a directly comparable 2023 breakout for this specific dollar threshold in NAIS’s public-facing report pages; the 2013-to-2018 comparison is the most granular, verifiable version of this specific finding currently available to us.
What Didn’t Change: Borrowing Stayed Flat
Not every number in this survey moved. The share of parents who borrowed money specifically to pay tuition held at 12% across 2013, 2018, and again in 2023, unchanged for a decade even as aid participation and aid amounts both climbed. Families are relying more heavily on financial aid itself, not increasingly turning to loans on top of it, a distinction easy to miss if you only see the headline stress number below.
Stress Went Up While Satisfaction Went Down
Between the 2018 and 2023 waves, the share of parents who said they felt stressed about paying for private school rose from 47% to 55%, while the share satisfied they’d made the right decision for their child fell from 54% to 44%. Both moved in the same direction across the same two waves, real evidence that the emotional weight of paying for private school has gotten heavier even as more families lean on aid to do it, not less.
What This Means for a Family Weighing the Decision
Rising aid participation and rising stress aren’t a contradiction: they’re consistent with a base cost that’s outpacing what aid budgets can fully offset. A separate compilation of NAIS’s own longer-run data (via the Southern Association of Independent Schools, a comparable nonprofit membership association) puts a number on that gap over two decades: average NAIS tuition rose from $14,622 in 2004 to $31,088 in 2024, while total financial aid awarded rose from $555,710 to $1.6 million over the same period, a real, sourced 20-year snapshot, though from just those two endpoints rather than the year-by-year detail the three-wave survey above provides. Taken together, the honest picture for a family is this: financial aid is doing real, measurable work, more families receive it, and more receive it in serious amounts, but it hasn’t kept pace closely enough to keep the emotional cost of paying for school from climbing too.
Related Reading
- Education Guides Hub
- The Real Cost of a School, Beyond Tuition
- How to Choose a School: An Independent Parent’s Comparison Guide
Sources: this piece is Gurukol’s own original analysis and visualization, built directly from NAIS’s own published survey summaries rather than a single secondary citation of them.
- NAIS, “2024 Report on How Parents Pay School Costs,” quoted directly, for the 2023-wave methodology (1,961 parents, drawn from families who completed a Parents’ Financial Statement in 2022-2023), the “nine out of ten… primary funding source” figure, the 55%-stressed and 44%-satisfied 2023 figures, and the 12%-borrowed-unchanged finding.
- NAIS, “2018 Report on How Parents Pay School Costs,” quoted directly, for the 2013-to-2018 comparison: 80%-to-88% aid-as-a-funding-source, 12%-to-21% receiving $25,000+ in aid, the 12%-borrowed figure for both waves, and the 2018 stress (47%) and satisfaction (54%) figures.
- Southern Association of Independent Schools, “FastStats: Tuition & Affordability in Independent Schools,” for the 20-year (2004-2024) NAIS tuition ($14,622 to $31,088) and total financial aid awarded ($555,710 to $1.6 million) figures, a secondary compilation of NAIS’s own historical data, cited here as supporting context for the multi-decade gap, not as part of the three-wave survey trend above.
Note: the 2023 wave’s report describes aid as parents’ “primary funding source,” a differently-scoped question than 2013/2018’s “mentioned as a funding source,” presented separately rather than merged into one continuous trend line, since the two aren’t measuring identically the same thing. A directly comparable 2023 breakout for the $25,000+-aid-recipient share could not be located in NAIS’s public-facing report pages; that comparison is presented only for 2013-to-2018, honestly, rather than estimated. Verified against these sources on 2026-08-07.