Tuition Ignition postscript: Looking back at a week of stories

Tuition Ignition: A week-long series looking at the soaring cost of college at public and private institutions

If you've read this week's Tuition Ignition series closely, you may have wondered why we didn't include community colleges or for-profit private institutions, such as University of Phoenix and DeVry University, in our reporting.

Both categories are important to understanding higher education in America. The short answer as to why we left them out is that we wanted to focus on tuition and aid among "traditional" students pursuing standard four-year bachelor's degrees. The vast majority of students working toward those degrees are enrolled at public and private non-profit institutions.

By contrast, just 10% of the nation's college students are enrolled at private for-profit schools. Community college students make up a much larger share, about a third of all higher education students.