The university bucked a national trend of rising college costs last year, as tuition and fees at most public universities soared while costs stayed relatively stable here.

Still, according to a report the College Board released last week, the university’s costs remain above national averages. Even as in-state students here enjoy a fourth straight year of a tuition freeze, they still pay $2,215 more than the average student attending a four-year public university.

And this comes after a year when in-state students at public universities nationwide saw their tuition and fees jump 6.5 percent.

University administrators, national experts and lawmakers at all levels of government have decried the rising costs, but the College Board report offers a glimmer of good news: As fast as tuition and fees have shot upwards, grant aid has increased at even faster rates.

“Looking at the published prices is very deceptive,” said Sandy Baum, the senior policy analyst who wrote the report, “Trends in College Pricing 2009.” “The increase in grant aid has been much more rapid than the prices that students and parents actually see published.”

Baum points out that while tuition and fees at public universities have increased 20 percent over the last five years, the average student actually pays $400 less today than they did five years ago when accounting for aid.

Baum said the average public school student received $5,400 in grant aid last year. But one-third of students still go through college without any financial assistance, a reason Baum said runaway college costs remain troubling.

“I am concerned about rising prices,” she said, adding that many universities’ hefty tuition prices discourage students from applying before they even consider possible sources of financial help.

“There are students that look at the published price and don’t know about financial aid and say, ‘I can’t afford college,'” she said.

Jane Wellman, the executive director of the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability, echoed concern about the College Board report.

“In public institutions around the country, students are paying for more, even as budgets are being cut, so they’re getting less,” Wellman wrote in an e-mail. “So it’s urgent that we get this fixed. This means attacking the problem at the first at the institutional level, by doing more to be transparent about managing resources, to increase cost effectiveness and by making student teaching and learning at the highest priority for resources.”

But referring to the university’s tuition freeze, Wellman reserved kind words for the university system.

“The University System of Maryland has been a national leader in showing how this might be done,” she wrote.

Still, the tuition freeze has not applied to out-of-state students, who saw their cost of college increase 3.96 percent last year. The percentage jump was well below the national 6.2 percent average national increase, but the out-of-state tuition here still eclipses the price most universities charge.

Out-of-state students paid $23,990 in tuition and fees this year. On average, out-of-state students at other colleges are paying $18,548.

And the tuition freeze that has recently protected in-state students may be in jeopardy this spring.

Provost Nariman Farvardin and Assistant Vice President for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie have endorsed the idea of raising in-state tuition for next year. And university President Dan Mote and university system Chancellor Brit Kirwan have acknowledged that higher prices will be necessary to maintain university operations.

slivnick at umdbk dot com