# How much is annually spent on education in the US

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-is-annually-spent-on-education-in-the-us/275875>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 20, 2004, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-is-annually-spent-on-education-in-the-us/275875 "2004-11-20T22:44:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2004, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-is-annually-spent-on-education-in-the-us/275875/1 "2004-11-20T22:44:44Z")

</div>

I’m talking about both private and public spending. And by public I mean preschool-12, state subsidies for college, state and federal grant programs for college, etc. I found this statistic

[http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/doe\_education\_spending.shtml](http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/doe_education_spending.shtml)

Nearly $373 billion of revenues were raised to fund public education for grades prekindergarten through 12 in school year 1999–2000.

Its probably closer to $400 billion now. Plus I have read that state funding of college comes to about $50-60 billion a year. And the pell grant budget is about $13 billion a year. So that takes care of most of the public cost of education and I assume it nears $500 billion a year, what about private spending?