An article about OOS tuition spotlights scholarship students. Why don’t they talk to the OOS students who are paying more than they would have for their own flagship and find out why?
UA did it to increase overall enrollment (which leads to more funding/tuition, exposure, etc.). The UC’s are doing it to capture OOS tuition, to help compensate for the drop in state funding (and to allow them to continue to offer a significant amount of need based aid).
Overall the trend to increase OOS students enrollment (by state public flagship/research universities) is being driven by a drop in state supplied funding.
Florida, Georgia and Tennessee are states that offer significant in-state merit based aid (Bright Futures and Hope scholarships). That tends to drive up in-state demand.
I too am curious about families willing to pay significantly more money to send their kids to an OOS school when their in-state flagship is cheaper and academically equivalent. Our son is going to Ohio State as an OOS student. We supported him exploring Ohio State only because we knew he was likely to qualify for their National Buckeye scholarship which would bring the cost down to our in-state flagship. In the end he got an additional scholarship on top of the National Bickeye that made the COA of attendance significantly cheaper than our in-state flagship.
We also supported his exploration of other OOS flagships but had they come out with a higher COA than his in-state flagship we would have had a really tough time agreeing to foot that bill. Fortunately for us he did not get overly attached to the idea of attending any of those other OOS schools because it would have been hard to so no if that was the school he truly felt was “the one”.
@Gator88NE I understand why the schools do it. I want to know why parents and students do it. Especially go into debt to do it.
Part of the reason in Texas is that the state flagships (UT and A&M) cannot accommodate all the kids who are state flagship level students here. If you can get a great scholarship in Oklahoma, Arkansas or Alabama, then you can explain it.
But why borrow money to go to Alabama over Texas Tech? Those are the people I want the NYT to talk to.
I have a senior who sort of falls between the cracks in terms of in-state options. She can’t get into UVA, William & Mary or VA Tech (students from her HS who get into these schools have at 4.0 or better) However, she can get into better schools than VCU and JMU if she goes OOS, so that’s what she is doing (probably without merit or with very little merit at the particular schools she chose - she had no interest in any southern schools, and that includes some schools in VA)
We can cover the cost of some OOS options, so we’ll pay the higher tuition up to a certain price point for the sake of letting her go where she wants to go. She doesn’t feel any particular attachment to her home state as a northern VA resident.
Maybe for the same reason they didn’t talk to students who chose pricey privates over their own in-state flagships? Maybe it was just beyond the scope of the story? (There are several other articles related to this particular story, so maybe they’ll cover that angle in a future story.)
It wasn’t our situation, but I know lots of families who pay more for an OOS flagship because they believed it to be the best value for their particular student–more expensive than the in-state flagship but still significantly less expensive than a comparable private.
Now, whether or not they go into debt to do so is a separate matter. I personally am loathe to have my kid assume ANY debt that’s not absolutely necessary, but obviously different families (at all socioeconomic levels) approach these thing differently.
Also, this story is in the Washington Post, not the New York Times.
The story talks about schools needing OOS students because they are full pay and then they talk to three scholarship students who all cite large merit scholarships as one of or THE reason they went to Alabama.
My school also recruits OOS, and we award a lot of scholarships. Our research indicates that for every kid we subsidize, 1-3 full-pay friends tag along. So in the balance, we end up with more revenue than if we’d recruited only in-state students.
Not all OOS students are paying more than they would at their instate schools. If the OOS school price can be brought down to close to the instate options, why not consider them?
I think one thing that is a little misleading about the statistic of how many OOS students are at schools like Idaho is that the new OOS students account for the growth of the school. There aren’t fewer instate students going to some of these schools, it’s just that the schools have grown a lot bigger and that’s due to the number of OOS students. Idaho kids are still going to school in Idaho, but now kids from other states are going there too. Texas kids are still going to Texas, but the growth in the state means there isn’t enough room for all of them so they find schools that have room, have money, have things to offer.
Most full pay OOS students are doing it for perceived prestige, or because they don’t have a good in-state option (either due to selectivity, cost, or match).
Keeping the conversation limited to Public Universities.
A rather small number of publics are recruiting large numbers of OOS based on prestige (UVA, UM, UN-C, the UC’s). A few publics have seen a recent jump in OOS demand, like Georgia Tech. Otherwise many are using scholarships/reduce tuition rates to recruit OOS students.
The number of OOS students that are willing to pay full OOS tuition is limited. It’s not growing (as the poplution of college age students isn’t growing). Unless you are a school like UC-Berkeley or UCLA, it’s hard to increase the number of full pay OOS students.
That’s one reason many publics are now aggressing recruiting international students (many from China). That, of course, has it’s own set of problems.
Well our instate flagship doesn’t have a very good program in my kids major. She’d need to attend the heavily commuter campus in a yucky part of a big city. No thanks. She went OOS
I have a somewhat similar answer, but it’s also true in Pennsylvania that the good state options are just as high as OOS options of other States. Going to PSU or Temple here, even in state, costs the same or more than WVU, Utah, UNCW. UA is only a few thousand a year more, a gap easily filled by scholarship. I actually recommend she goes out of state for a more interesting life experience, and honestly all the schools are very good in their own ways.
If your instate costs are $30,000 (on average for COA instate) and you’re not going to get any need based aid from the college you have $35,000 expected to pay with with fed loans. States with an in-state cost significantly lower than $30,000 for in-state families all in are very happy to accept a kid who will pay more than the in-state kids even if they discount the tuition with merit money and even better if their stats are close to the high end of their typical class. That’s why some out of state parents don’t mind. My oldest two did not want anything to do with a school that had over 40,000 kids which eliminates Michigan’s two flagship universities so I had no problem shipping them somewhere else. Heck I turned down UofM and only applied because my parents insisted in my day because it was too big and sprawly and too impersonal so I sure understood my kids feelings.
In-state works if you live in a state where the public universities are low-cost and in states that have state sponsored scholarships. Michigan has neither “cheap costs” or “state scholarships.” Michigan is an expensive state, high taxes, high insurance rates, high utility costs and high college tuition. It ranks in the top ten for property taxes right behind Connecticut for example and has the highest of all states in car insurance. It costs alot to live here.
UofM can get 50 to 60,000 or double what full pay in-state kids pay from out of state families willing to pay that much and Mary Sue Coleman is on record of saying yup, i want that, It’s a good thing. UofM is raising money to raise scholarship funds for out of state kids, but it’s years away from being hugely impactful and that doesn’t stop them from still padding it up with internationals and out of state full pay kids. Bully for them if they can get it. I don’t feel like I’m getting any financial savings paying tuition instate with my 3rd.
My second works side by side in Michigan with a UofM grad with the same major and degree so “being instate” wasn’t a factor for me regarding where and what career they pursued. It’s about the kid.
How about a top 10 list of most expensive universities for OOS students?
My oldest two are looking at OOS options because we live in Alaska.
First of all, there’s the issue that the in-state options here have, well, certain issues on the input side. (Our state flagship is the most selective of the one private+three public four-year universities in the state—but even so it still shows up in the Peterson’s guide as “minimally selective”.) This isn’t unique to Alaska, but there you go. Of course, with honors colleges and such that isn’t quite so big a deal.
The bigger problem is that the fields of study offered by our in-state options are incredibly limited—and my children are interested in subjects that aren’t offered up here. The colleges in Alaska are actually decent at what they do, I think, but if you’re interested in, say, industrial design? Time to pay private or OOS tuition.
@dfbdfb , there are a lot of Alaskans at UW-Seattle, for example.
Seattle Times just reported that this year’s freshman application pool at UW is 25% instate, 50% OOS and 25% international. Total number of applicants is 43,334, up from 36,528 in 2015 and 31,611 in 2014, with the growth almost entirely from OOS.
In talking with OOS families regarding the UW over the years, most seem to align with the observation by @LucieTheLakie:
“I know lots of families who pay more for an OOS flagship because they believed it to be the best value for their particular student–more expensive than the in-state flagship but still significantly less expensive than a comparable private.”
Thanks for reminding me that I live in a state with quite a few good in state options at a very low cost for in state. I forget that and take it for granted and assume that exists everywhere.
DS applied early to U Michigan and thought that it was more than likely that he’d end up there. He knew that he would be admitted (no randomness in the Naviance data) and most of the other colleges on his list are highly selective. He ended up being admitted to his ED school, very much against the odds, and so withdrew his application.
Why was Michigan on his list, when all of his other schools, except his SUNY safety, were medium-sized private universities or LAC? And when OOS tuition is similar to private school tuition? Academics. Because when you look at a particular major that not that many colleges are strong in, and you feel that you need a list of a dozen or so schools, Michigan’s honors college starts to look pretty good. Especially when the admissions rates of the other schools (except for the SUNY) range from 8-30%.
I didn’t really want him at a school with 40,000 students, but I am from Michigan, he’s spent a lot of time there, he loves Michigan (the state), and he was happy about the prospect of going to college there. Because he was sure that he would be admitted, and his chances were not good at the other schools, he thought it was likely that he’d end up there.
We would be paying more for instate expense ( $5000 to $7000) as the scholarships are not as lucrative for high stats students. K-State and KU have very good engineering programs but the merit scholarships are low for instate kids. Schools in the SEC; Arkansas, Ole Miss, Miss St, and Alabama are willing to pay great merit scholarships to attract OSS kids and it’s working. My son also wanted to experience college life outside his state, where many of his friends are staying in state.
We have friends who their kids are going Ivy League and out west and having to pay over $100,000 when it’s all said and done. No thanks! My son will still get a great education without being in debt. But it’s sad when state schools don’t want to offer more to keep kids instate or at least wave a good bone in front of them.