Cosmetics.
Those who might benefit the most are those current full pay/no need based FA students. Their cost will go down 30%.
Same at Randolph College. Using same consultants?? https://www.randolphcollege.edu/news/2019/09/randolph-announces-a-price-reset-for-tuition-room-and-board/
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Seems like almost everyone (98%) at Carthage gets some kind of grant or scholarship aid. Could be that relatively few students are actually paying a net price higher than $31k + room/board.
https://carthage.studentaidcalculator.com/ suggests that a student with a 2.9 GPA, 20 ACT score, and $99,999 FAFSA EFC will see a net price of $31k, after $24k scholarships and grants subtracted from a list price of $56k ($44k tuition + $12k room/board).
This is a trend. At a certain point, the proportion of potential applicants who feel that a school is overpriced (based on its brand) gets too high. Many, many colleges are seriously considering a list price reset right now.
Difficult thing to do well. Must not communicate to market that quality will suffer or that the school is in trouble.
The elite schools have benefitted from the constant tuition increases, and they are the ones which could really make a difference in the market by ‘stopping the madness.’ But they won’t as they benefit from the current (but unsustainable forever) business model.
Most parents do not understand the notion of discounting nor leverage it properly. And most equate high price with educational quality and are way too in love with saying their kid got a ‘scholarship.’
The market size and demand continues to shift (bad for non-elite private colleges). Once this picks up pace and parents grow used to it, will accelerate.
On the flip side, colleges are getting better at cost control and understanding what it really costs to provide a quality college education. That was a long time coming.
One of my alma maters just did this. It was all over Facebook with people who were whining about what about the kids who just graduated, or why were they previously $20,000 overpriced, or this is so wonderful of them to do…
I pointed out that nothing really changed. My DD’17 had applied there and with $24,000 scholarship would have had a net price of $24,000. Now with the tuition reset and the new $4000 scholarship, her price would have been $24,000. On one hand yes it’s cool to say you were given $96,000 scholarship (and they do take it times 4 in your award letter for maximum effect). On the other hand the college got a lot of publicity there for a little bit.
I guess it’s good for those who are full pay (but with my DD having a 25 ACT and getting second highest scholarship I doubt there are many not getting a scholarship) or who might be in danger of losing scholarship due to GPA.