College costs have accelerated exponentially over the past several decades, a major factor in federal student loan debt now totaling more than $1 trillion. Private college leaders, however, say that they may have a solution. They want a chance to experiment with collaborative efforts across institutions aimed at bringing college costs down.
Schools argue that they have a vested interest in reducing tuition prices to make themselves attractive to more students, and that a tuition reset would be most effective when done in concert with other institutions.
“As prices have escalated, we’re all sitting here wondering how can we best control the price perception issue, drive the price down, drive the discount rate down with it and get to a cost that is more aligned with the real cost to us per capita to run the institution,” said Dr. Steven R. DiSalvo, president of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
A handful of schools have attempted tuition resets on their own. Rosemont College in suburban Philadelphia, for instance, decided to cut costs to students from $46,000 in prior years to $30,000 for 2016-2017. The school reported a 15 percent increase in enrollment for last fall.
An exemption to federal antitrust laws may be an unusual measure, but proponents say that it could give the sector the leverage to respond to current strains. Institutions have had to respond to many external pressures of late. The economic downturn created financial troubles for schools and families alike, while the available pool of prospective applicants is growing smaller, leading to more competition among institutions for the same students.
“There’s a lot of economic pressures that have accelerated since the economic downturn – you have many more families with need and we are at a price tipping point,” said Sarah A. Flanagan, vice president for government relations and policy development at NAICU. “Families are looking at sticker price and are saying, ‘I can’t afford this, I’m not even going to look at this institution.’”
