Education 401(k) plans
The median 401(k) plan in education paid $94.85 per participant per year in plan-paid administrative fees, computed from 824 of the 861 education plans on file, form year 2024.
Computed from DOL EFAST2 Form 5500 bulk data, not surveys. All 57,824 large plans in the form-year-2024 data are read here, so the 861 plans in this industry are every plan of that size filed under its business codes. The median is taken over the 824 of them whose filing reports a plan-paid administrative cost, because a filing that reports none has no cost to rank. It still does not describe the whole industry: a plan with fewer than 100 participants files a shorter form and is not in this data at all.
$94.85
Median plan-paid administrative cost per participant per year among 824 education plans with usable fee data, form year 2024.
$27.33 below the $122.17 median across all published plans.
How do education 401(k) fees compare?
Plan size drives fees more than industry does: bigger plans pay less per head. See median fees by plan size before reading an industry gap as an industry effect.
17 of the biggest education 401(k) plans
| Plan | Sponsor | Active participants | Assets | Fee ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Source 4 Solutions LLC 401(k) Profit Sharing Plan & Trust | Source 4 Solutions LLC | 111,388 | $10.2M | 0.30 |
| Edustaff, LLC 401(k) Plan | Edustaff, LLC | 56,898 | $10.0M | 2.16 |
| Learning Care Group Retirement Savings Plan | La Petite Academy, Inc. | 19,717 | $101.4M | 18.76 |
| Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Supplemental 401(k) Plan | Massachusetts Institute Of Technology | 15,125 | $7.7B | 29.84 |
| Stride, Inc. 401(k) Plan | Stride, Inc. | 8,364 | $257.7M | 57.70 |
| Grand Canyon University Employees 401(k) Plan | Grand Canyon University | 8,221 | $158.3M | 52.04 |
| Eduserve/Csusa Retirement Plan | Eduserve, Inc. | 7,804 | $84.0M | 58.01 |
| Management & Training Corporation Retirement Plan | Management & Training Corporation | 7,036 | $198.1M | 94.33 |
| National Heritage Academies, Inc. Retirement Savings Plan | National Heritage Academies, Inc. | 6,715 | $307.3M | 94.78 |
| Spring Education Group 401(k) Retirement Plan | Seg Inc. | 6,418 | $217.0M | 70.12 |
| The University Of Phoenix, Inc. Savings And Investment Plan | The University Of Phoenix, Inc. | 6,104 | $586.0M | 47.70 |
| Fullbloom Retirement Savings Plan | Fullbloom | 5,955 | $85.5M | 63.53 |
| American Public Education Retirement Plan | American Public Education Inc. | 5,899 | $303.2M | 1.38 |
| Keck Medicine Of Usc 401(k) Retirement Plan | University Of Southern California | 5,635 | $186.1M | n/a |
| Carnegie Mellon University 401(k) Plan | Carnegie Mellon University | 5,436 | $63.5M | 16.04 |
| Nova Southeastern University 401(k) Plan | Nova Southeastern University, Inc. | 4,785 | $560.5M | 56.57 |
| Grand Canyon Education Employees 401(k) Plan | Grand Canyon Education, Inc. | 4,745 | $191.7M | 49.74 |
The education plans with a page of their own are listed below by size, and the same set is findable by employer name from the search on the home page.
Every Education plan page, by size
The table above is the top of the list. These 2 pages hold the 18 published plan pages in education, out of 861 filings of that kind in the data, split by how many people are in them, each ranked by active participants.
- 100 to 499 participants · 1 plans
- 5,000 or more participants · 17 plans
Which education companies disclose their 401(k) match?
For this employer we also read the SEC Form 11-K and extracted the match terms, matched to this industry by the plan’s EIN.
- Graham Holdings Co
100% (dollar-for-dollar) of the first 1% of pay
Which employers count as education here?
Educational services (code 611000).
The code is the IRS principal business activity code the sponsor itself puts on Form 5500, line 2d. Medians count only plans whose Schedule H shows a positive plan-paid administrative expense (824 of 861 plans here). Plan-paid expenses exclude fund expense ratios and employer-paid bills, so every figure is a floor, not the all-in cost. Latest filing in this group received by the DOL July 23, 2026; source dataset last refreshed July 28, 2026. Full methodology
Cite this page
401(k) Monitor, “Education 401(k) plans: median plan-paid administrative cost per participant”, computed from DOL EFAST2 Form 5500 bulk data, form year 2024.
