"A Washington State private college will cut its tuition by 25 percent next fall. In New York, a private college will cut its sticker price by more than 50 percent, as will a private college in Delaware. The list of colleges slashing price tags for the next year has grown long this fall.
Amid the pandemic, dozens of colleges have announced tuition resets, freezes or expanded scholarship programs for the upcoming academic year. The trend follows similar announcements over the spring and summer, made as colleges face increased pressure to lower prices to keep and attract students.
But some colleges say the pricing adjustments have been in the works for years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
College sticker prices have been on the rise for decades. Even during the pandemic, tuition ticked upward, though at a historically low rate, according to the College Board’s Trends in College Pricing report released last month. Average private college tuition rates increased by $700 to $37,650 during the 2020-21 academic year.
For years, administrators at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., observed that prospective students and families ruled out the college based on its high tuition price." …
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/11/11/private-colleges-slash-sticker-prices-emphasize-affordability-avoid-blaming-pandemic
Some schools the article mentioned doing the tuition resets were:
Gordon (MA)
Houghton (NY)
Seattle Pacific (WA)
Spring Hill (AL)
I have heard of tuition resets at
Birmingham-Southern (AL)
Roanoke (VA)
Rider (NJ)
The article finishes with a quote from someone affiliated with the schools saying,
“We’re not the exception,” he said. “This will become the rule.”
Do people think that this will become a trend for increased transparency and attracting first generation students and others who are unaware that these are sticker prices that are usually highly discounted? Or is this a last-ditch effort from schools struggling with enrollment issues? Or…?
Also, what other tuition resets have people heard of?
Cleveland Institute of Music lowered its tuition by 15% in 2018 and kept it flat since then. Promises no tuition increase during the course of a student’s enrollment there.
Purdue is on its 11th year of a tuition and room and board freeze. We are actually paying less now than when we started because of housing choices.
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During DD’19’s search, two schools in our area reset tuition- University of Sioux Falls, and Central College in Iowa. However, they both cut their automatic scholarships accordingly. COA calculators gave the same net result for her stats before and after the reset.
I suppose for someone that wasn’t going to get the auto merit it could be helpful, but at these schools, most applicants would get some merit.
Willamette University also froze or lowered tuition, I believe. And they give lots of merit.
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That article from a couple years ago listed several institutions, some of whom found the pri e cuts beneficial, and others who did not and had to reverse course (like U. of Charleston in West Virginia).