Some Private Colleges Slashing Tuition Prices Due to Lower Enrollment
“We just wondered how many families are we not even in conversation with because our sticker price was pretty high”
It rarely gets mentioned, but we have a student tuition debt problem because colleges have become so ridiculously expensive.
FOX 25 News in Boston reports:
Local private colleges slash tuition prices as enrollment declines
As college enrollment numbers continue to decline, small private schools are slashing tuition prices in an effort to entice more students to apply.
“We know the price was scaring families away,” Lasell University President Michael Alexander said.
Lasell University in Newton announced it is dropping its published tuition price by 33%, from $59,130 to $39,500 in 2022-23. The private four-year non-profit has seen its enrollment numbers steadily erode, from a peak of 2,100 students in 2015 down to 1,650 in 2022.
“By reducing the published price, we certainly would hope that more people would apply,” Alexander said. “If they see a sticker price of $60,000 or more, there’s research out there that says 60% of them don’t take the next step to apply or figure out if they can afford it.”
College enrollment has been declining since 2010, according to data from BestColleges, with colleges and universities losing around 3.3 million students—or 17% of enrollment–between 2011 and 2022. According to The Hechinger Report, as many as 100 colleges may lower their prices to reverse this trend.
One of the most frustrating aspects for consumers, the Hechinger Report found, is the difference between a school’s sticker price—its published tuition cost–and the actual price a student will pay after scholarships and institutional aid are subtracted.
“Many families are not aware that some students do not pay the full sticker price for college. Only 18% of college-bound families agree that the amount families actually pay is lower than the price advertised by the school,” a 2022 Sallie Mae College Confidence report found.
“We just wondered how many families are we not even in conversation with because our sticker price was pretty high,” said Colby-Sawyer College President Susan Stuebner. “100% of our students receive some sort of institutional aid, either need-based or merit-based.”
Colby-Sawyer in New London, New Hampshire announced it’s slashing its published tuition by 62%, from $46,365 down to $17,500.
“What most families don’t know is that the listed price is far above what they would pay if they were to enlist in Colby-Sawyer,” Stuebner said. “It is more reflective of what kids actually pay to attend Colby-Sawyer, so we’re taking the gamesmanship and the confusion out of it.”
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Comments
The free market at work.
If it hadn’t been for market-warping government subsidies (loans), half of them would have become squatter housing already.
The sticker price at these small colleges is about as believable as the msrp on a rv. only fools are paying the msrp or list price.
Oh, I get it. They drop the sticker price but won’t offer as much of a discount. These scamsters should go into the used car business.
When the presidents of colleges sound as sincere and as convincing as Jerry Lundergaard — the car salesman in the movie Fargo played by Bill Macy — perhaps it’s a good time to rethink your life choices.
If they can get by at lower price, where was the margin going before?
Um, in what sense are these “non-profit” organizations? “Non-political?”
Mostly they demonstrate how much money you can make being a hedge-fund, supported by stipends extracted in a Ponzi-scheme of access, the payers will never get.
The conundrum remains “How do we otherwise provide what they claimed to, and sometimes did?”