From today’s Fresh Air show on NPR, this author has a book relevant to this discussion:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2015/03/03/390167950/prepare-for-the-end-of-college-heres-what-free-higher-ed-looks-like
Well, today a 114 year old liberal arts college closed (Sweet Briar), so maybe it is collapsing faster than we think.
@Darthelmet - Before the 1970’s, companies regularly applied had aptitude tests to applicants and employees. However, with the rise of Disparate Impact tests, that practice faded, and companies more and more relied upon education certificates as a measure of aptitude, leading to our present system.
Sweet Briar’s AVERAGE tuition discount for the most recent year was 63%.
That’s what they had to do to enroll students at a small, rural, liberal arts, single sex college. But that level of discounting didn’t bring in enough dollars to keep the doors open.
IMO that still has something to do with the “college bubble”, just the opposite effect. Their tuition used to be high and the school itself isn’t a major attractor like an Ivy or top LAC, so they raced for the lowest price and with only 700~ students obviously that wasn’t enough.
Of course, if the only affordable choices are super-selective schools (which even highly competitive applicants are unlikely to get admitted to) or the local commutable state school (whose academic offerings may not align with the student’s interests, or which may itself be highly selective if one happens to live near a highly selective flagship), then that increases the possibility of the student having no affordable academically suitable choices at all.
@AlapinVariation, actually, that is already not the trend for almost all schools if you’re talking about net price (which is what matters for a school).
PT. do you really believe that most schools give,such a high discount? By the way, the Trinity data also show that the “mean total of all loans” is over $28,0000. The averages in the table are for those that received need based aid, not for all students.
Sweetbriar College
@PurpleTitan is correct. Last year the mean tuition discount of first-time, full-time undergraduate students at non-profit private colleges was estimated at 46.4%. See this NACUBO survey – http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/about/pressreleases/2013TDSPressRelease.pdf. Probably even higher this year/next year. And I know there are “good” schools where it is well into the 50s…
Yep, @mom2and, yep, if you’re talking about privates. Some publics give relatively few discounts (other than the in-state discount), but the number of privates that don’t give close to 50% or more (let’s say 35% or more) of their student body any discounts are relatively few. Note that pretty much none of the meet-full-need elite privates are among them as they give around 50% of their student body fin aid.
The only privates where a vast majority of the student body pay full-fare are those that have the brand name to pull in students and make them pay (and don’t have the endowment to meet full need). Like NYU. It’s actually a bit difficult to name more schools like that. Maybe BU?
Actually, according to NYU’s CDS, they give grants to almost half it’s students. Which sounds surprisingly high (then again, even a $500 award/discount would count; maybe the Pell grant counts as well?). At BU and WashU, over 35% of the student body receive a grant/discount as well. It seems like it may be almost impossible to find a school where 65% or more of the student body is full-pay and receives no grants/discount.
Is there any private college that has a majority of its kids paying full price?
Schools give big discounts to smart kids (the merit aid schools) or poor kids (Ivies and their like) or both.
Harvard is about 40% full sticker payors. That’s actually a very high number. Most schools would kill to have that many full payors.
Colleges have actually experienced flat net tuition revenue for 13 years. High sticker price, high discounts.
Some of the comparisons of the grant award rate given upthread aren’t apples-to-apples, though—there’s a difference between what proportion of the student body gets a grant at a $60k university and what proportion gets it at a $35k university. There are a lot of families who would get a financial need grant at the former but not the latter; also, there’s quite simply less of a need to give a non-need-based grant at the latter and still look like a better deal.
But these “mean discounts” and “net discounts” are not guaranteed to anybody. Statistically, yes, many students are not paying full sticker. But individually, a student could apply to a good handful of schools and get NO discount. That is the problem: a “B” average middle class student with definite need, but not great need, may apply to ten schools and get full sticker demands from every single one. There is no way to know in advance if you will be one of the lucky students who only has to pay the typical net tuition. The process is opaque, and it is shutting out a good many INDIVIDUAL students, even if the “mean” is benefitting.
@prospect1, a “B” average middle class student can usually get in to and afford an in-state public.
@purpletitan, the problem with college prices today is that the free market does not work. It is similar to healthcare. You don’t know the price until after you have committed to the product. It is extremely difficult to shop in advance and narrow your choices because the prices are fluid and not easily predictable - and sticker is ridiculously high.
Yes, you know the final college price by late March/April, but at that point it’s too late to go back and try to find cheaper options. The system makes it impossible and inadvisable to apply to 100 schools, so you do your best with 10-15 and hope. And in-state publics? The prices are just as unknowable. UC’s might be going up by thousands next year - or maybe not - who knows? There’s no way to know. U of Illinois is 30k plus already instate. And once the kid commits, the prices can continue to escalate - or not - who knows? Laws regarding interest rates for student loans change on whims of Congress - and publics get less and less funding.
The problem is, for a large sector of the middle class, the choices are limited and there is not a lot of leeway for guessing and predicting. When I buy an expensive product, I want to shop around, find the best price for the quality I’m looking for, and make my purchase assured that the price won’t change. College was never really that type of “product” for many reasons, but the problem today is that prices are SO high that it is much, much harder to shop with confidence. There is no room for error in this game, unlike the days when instate tuition was a few bucks per credit hour (ie U Texas in the 70’s). Back then, you knew exactly what you were committing to, in advance, no surprises, and no need to apply to a dozen schools. You knew when you stepped onto campus that your carefully saved dollars were sufficient to see you through to graduation.
Today, price predictability only exists for the very wealthy or the very poor. For everyone else, it’s an unfair guessing game. And THAT’s why these ridiculous sticker prices are so harmful for the majority of students.
Net price calculators on college web sites can help you get financial aid estimates. They may not be perfect, but their existence makes estimating prices much less of a shot in the dark that it was before they existed.
NPCs do indeed help but they are far off the mark for many. With my kids, they were wildly inaccurate. For many in the middle class, “close enough” does not work. The margins are tight, and the prices need to be predicted with accuracy. This is why big sticker prices hurt so many in the middle.
@prospect1, that’s no different from shopping at a souk where you haggle over the price since you get ripped off if you pay list price. People generally don’t say a souk isn’t a free market.
Also, at some schools, the tuition is fixed for your 4 years there. UIUC is like that.
There is opacity with the process, but that’s where something like the fin aid/scholarship forum on CC comes in handy. List your circumstances and people will list options available to you.