<p>Has anyone run into the salesmanship that goes on at some schools? The tuition/room and board is listed at a certain price, but you are "lucky" to get merit aid, so you think you are attending a high priced school at a discount, so it MUST be a good school??..We've experienced this to a certain extent, and it reminded me of an article in the NY Times..here si the link, an interesting read</p>
<p>This is usually done for students that the school feels are most desirable (high stats, etc). I don’t think this applies to most students.</p>
<p>high sticker price also helps the nation’s balance of payments at schools that don’t grant aid to internationals.</p>
<p>I do think it’s a bit of a flim-flam. Some people associate a high sticker price with product quality. And as car dealers have known for decades, it’s much easier to sell a $27,000 car at a $2,000 “discount” than to sell that same car at a full sticker price of $25,000, because the purchaser of the $27,000 car thinks he’s getting a better deal.</p>
<p>Raising tuition and recycling the additional revenue back into FA serves several other purposes for colleges. First, it’s a form of redistributive progressive taxation, since the full-pays actually do pay more while those on FA get a bigger nominal discount—making the school look that much more generous and therefore attractive. And second, it’s a way of inflating the school’s nominal spending-per-student, which helps in its US News rankings. Think about it: if instead of charging a high tuition and then offering sharp discounts the school simply dropped its tuition to a more affordable level, its budget—and therefore its spending per student—would drop precipitously. That’s a huge advantage that private schools have over publics in the US News rankings game, since the publics are offering a low initial sticker price to their in-state students while the privates are nominally charging a high sticker price and then turning around and recycling a large fraction of the tuition revenue right back into FA. The privates appear on paper to be both wealthier and more generous and come out looking better in the US News rankings with higher spending-per-student—even though a certain amount of it is just accounting gimmickry.</p>
<p>Human psychology I suppose. Like pricing your house (or item on ebay) really low to encourage a bidding war. The end result of both practices is that people don’t really see the true value of something, because they’re too caught up in the game.</p>
<p>Our local farmer’s market is changing rapidly in the same way. $5 for a dozen eggs? $3 for ONE head of garlic? Much like the schools, they are cultivating a cachet around these products to make people believe in a new value/price standard. A farmer from NC visited and was astonished at the prices (which he said he could never get at home). But… they do double WIC coupons and food stamps.</p>
<p>Still, even with the tuition “discounts”, many, many people are paying more with this system. How many people have had to take out extra loans or drop out altogether because of the higher prices? That’s what bothers me.</p>