St. Johns River State College dropped its published in-state tuition and fees by $239 for the 2024-25 academic year, bringing the annual cost to $2,591 for full-time students.

The decrease, from $2,830 the prior year, makes Clay County's only public four-year institution one of just six such colleges in Florida to lower tuition, according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data cited in a Pensacola State College press release. The college enrolled 7,927 undergraduate students during the same period, according to NCES figures reported by Clay County Times.

Cost falls well below state, national averages

The $2,591 figure sits well under the $3,808 statewide average for Florida's 41 four-year public institutions, as reported in NCES's 2026 "College Affordability and Transparency Lists." The national average is $8,840 for four-year public institutions, according to the same NCES report.

Among 29 Florida counties with complete NCES data, the weighted average published in-state tuition ranged from $2,370 in Bay County to $6,916 in Sarasota County. Clay County's figure lands near the bottom of that scale.

Out-of-state students at St. Johns River State College paid $9,335 in published tuition and fees for 2024-25.

National tuition trend moves in other direction

The College Board's "Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025" report found that average published tuition and fees at public four-year institutions nationally reached $11,950 for in-state students in 2025-26, a 2.9% increase from the prior year before adjusting for inflation. That figure covers a different academic year and methodology than the NCES data but underscores the broader upward trend that the college bucked.

Florida as a whole remains among the most affordable states for public higher education. The College Board report pegged the state's average published tuition and fees at $6,360 for 2025-26, the lowest of any state.

The NCES figures come from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and may be updated if the agency publishes a revised file for the same collection year.