BYU students average 10 semesters to graduate, Jenkins said. Five years of tuition at the current LDS rate would cost a total of $18,862 — far below others listed in the Princeton Review's top 10.

Top-ranked Bates College charges $39,000 a semester.

Bates is still listed as a great value because the sticker shock is really much lower. The average freshman gets $20,000 in grants, Franek said.

University of Utah spokesman Fred Esplin congratulated BYU for its ranking but declined further comment Monday. The U. charges $1,493 per semester for state residents and $4,478 for nonresidents.

One reason BYU tuition is kept deliberately low, according to the university, is to help students graduate with minimal debt or manageable student loans.

At Utah public colleges, students assume about 40 percent of the cost of school operations through tuition. Other costs are covered mostly by taxes.

Justin and Nancy Ashby have a fraction of the debt of many college students. Justin graduates this week from BYU in electrical engineering and Nancy graduated last year in math education. Before she graduated, they nearly broke even every month, as a couple, by working 30 hours a week in campus jobs. Federal financial aid available to married students covered the low tuition payments.

The Ashbys have managed to save some money that, with little debt and a little help from family, has allowed them to make a down payment to build a home in Lehi.

BYU also is considered a training ground for future church leaders. LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley has said scriptural admonitions require secular learning and that although BYU can only directly touch a percentage of college-age Latter-day Saints, it's worth the cost.

"We can accommodate only a relatively few," President Hinckley said in 1999. "If we cannot give to all, why should we give to any? The answer is that if we cannot give to all, let us give to as many as we can.

"The number who can be accommodated on campus is finite, but the influence is infinite."

BYU was listed as the nation's second-best value a year ago by Consumer's Digest, and U.S. News & World Report ranked the Provo school in the top 10 last year for "least debt among graduates."

The LDS Church assumed BYU's debts more than 80 years ago in exchange for the school's real estate. Authors Gary James Bergera and Ronald Priddis, who wrote "Brigham Young University: A House of Faith," estimated in the mid-1980s that the church subsidized the university to the tune of more than $150 million a year.

Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Church's Quorum of the Twelve said in 1995 that $7,500 is spent annually on each BYU student. If that figure still holds true, the total cost now would be $225 million.

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Contributing: Tiffany Erickson

E-mail: twalch@desnews.com