Tuition plays a significant role in determining whether a student could afford higher education, which is one of the major driving forces for country development and social prosperity. So it is necessary to fully understand what factors might affect the tuition and how they affect it. However, many existing studies on the tuition growth rate either lack sufficient real data and proper quantitative models to support their conclusions, or are limited to focus on only a few factors that might affect the tuition growth rate, failing to make a comprehensive analysis. In this paper, we explore a wide variety of factors that might affect the tuition growth rate by use of large amounts of authentic data and different quantitative methods such as clustering and regression models.