It is one of the hallmarks of the modern consumer economy that when we’re going to buy something, we want to know what it’s going to cost. But when it comes to a college education, one of the biggest purchases many people will make, it can be pretty hard to figure out what it’ll cost.

We’re not talking about the sticker price, which can be eye-watering, but the net price, after scholarships and grants, which isn’t evident in most financial aid offers that go out to students. More than 90% of American colleges either understate the net price in those letters or don’t state it at all, according to the Government Accountability Office.

But this all could change, because on Monday, more than 360 schools and universities announced they have committed to the College Cost Transparency Initiative, a set of standards to make these aid offers more transparent.

Students and parents have a lot of numbers to crunch as they make decisions about college. So some of them turn for help to Jennifer Jessie, a college consultant in the Washington, D.C., area. 

“[They want] to see which school is going to put me in the best position to avoid debt,” she said. “And then you want to make an educated decision. It’s higher, and it’s worth more to me, or it’s not worth more to me.” 

One tool Jessie uses to figure that out are the financial aid offers students get every year, but she said they often don’t provide enough information. 

“Some colleges will put the loans on the offers, some won’t,” she said. “And then some don’t even have the net price at the bottom.”

The new voluntary standards are supposed to help with that problem. 

“The school needs to pull together everything it knows at a single point in time and try to show to the student, ‘This is how much college is going to cost,'” said Justin Draeger, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, which is managing the initiative. 

The more than 360 schools that have signed on to the standards serve about 4 million students.

But there are thousands of schools in the country, and Bryce McKibben of the Hope Center for College Community and Justice at Temple University said the voluntary standards still don’t mean comparison shopping is going to be easy. 

“That doesn’t mean the offer itself is going to look the same,” he said. “Where are the actual net price is could be in all sorts of different parts of the page and be hard for students to tease out so that they actually understand what it is is being asked of them to do in the coming year.”

McKibben said he’d like to see legislation that requires standardization, not just voluntary guidelines.