College price increases slowed this year, but they again topped inflation, and financial aid isn’t keeping pace, a new report says.

Tuition and fees at public four-year public colleges rose $344, or 6.3%, to an average of $5,836 for the 2006–07 academic year, according to the College Board’s annual “Trends in College Pricing” report, released yesterday.

Accounting for inflation, prices rose just 2.4% — the lowest rise in six years, and the third straight time the gap between prices and overall inflation has narrowed. Tuition and fees at private four-year colleges rose 5.9% overall, to $22,218.

The news that price hikes are getting smaller is tempered by the fact that this decade has been a period of extraordinary increases in college costs. Published prices are up 35% in five years — the largest increase of any five-year period in the 30 years covered by the report.

That’s coupled with the reality that grant aid — from the government, colleges, and private sources — isn’t covering the price hikes. For the 62% of full-time undergraduates who receive grant aid, the average net cost of a four-year public school rose 8% to $2,700, the report said. The best news came for people at the nation’s public two-year colleges, which educate nearly half of American college students. There, tuition and fees rose just 4.1% to $2,272. The increase was limited by California, which is home to more than a fifth of the nation’s two-year public college students and lowered tuition and fees 12% this year. Elsewhere, prices rose 5.1%.