Why One Small College Was Able to Cut Its Tuition by 62 Percent

So Colby-Sawyer is now just advertising the lower tuition rate that most students were already paying. The college doesn’t expect much to change as a result: Colby-Sawyer subtly acknowledged that the college was “stronger financially than we have been in recent history” and that its donors have provided record levels of giving, including doubling the school’s endowment. In other words, the school can “afford” to lower its tuition without suffering any loss—not only because of its bigger endowment, which generates some cushion, but also because most of its students were probably already paying well below its previous $46,000 rate.

To understand the current relationship between advertised tuition rates and financial aid, consider the argument made by Kevin Carey recently in Slate: He implored readers to realize that aid packages are often already doing the work of marketing, convincing a student to pick a college based on the size of the aid package, which is less significant once you realize that most people aren’t paying sticker price anyway. The current lack of transparency around this has caused tons of problems: “Many families make bad decisions based on the misleading vocabulary colleges use around financial aid, leading to broken futures and increasingly unaffordable student loans,” Carey wrote.

Financial aid is essentially determined not by need but by an algorithm that decides how much money a student is willing to pay to attend college. What this announcement really shows is Colby-Sawyer’s admitting that that number is much lower than what its tuition currently suggests. There are costs to this false advertising: “Our high listed price means we often don’t get the chance to tell prospective students about our financial aid programs, much less help them become students who find their voices, develop their passions and become active learners.” This move, to some degree, helps level the playing field, even if it doesn’t ultimately do much to change the cost of attendance.

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