Study: Paying Tuition With Credit Cards Is Costly

Many colleges allow students or families to pay tuition bills with credit cards, but the fees associated with those payments may be costly enough that any rewards from the credit card company are wiped out. That is the bottom line of a new survey from CreditCards.com, a division of the finance research site Bankrate. The survey of the 300 largest public and private colleges found that 85 percent accept payments with credit cards, but the average "convenience fee" is 2.62 percent, generally more than the value of reward points a card user might receive. While substantial majorities of four-year colleges (public and private) charge convenience fees, only 8 percent of community colleges do so.