Such problems can't be solved just by
throwing money at them
excellent post, m...
here's a novel idea
riponcollegedays.com
Tiny college has big idea: Cut tuition
By Robert Becker, Chicago Tribune (KRT)
February 19, 2004
EUREKA, Ill. -- With higher-education costs around the country increasing at a double-digit gallop, tiny Eureka College recently took an unconventional step: It slashed its tuition.
By lowering its sticker price to $13,000 from $18,700 -- a whopping 30 percent drop -- for the coming fall semester, the liberal arts college hopes high school students and their cash-strapped families will take a hard look at this intimate, redbrick campus about 20 miles east of Peoria, Ill.
While schools around the country are boosting tuition to offset the rising cost of educating students, a few private, small liberal arts colleges like Eureka are drastically cutting tuition in the hopes of emerging from the blur of private schools priced in the $20,000 range or being more competitive with local state schools.
"Putting the banner out and just sitting there quietly works for Harvard," said Brian Sajko, dean of admissions and financial aid at Eureka. "It probably wouldn't work for us. We need to wave the banner."
Right now, the trend is restricted to small private schools like Eureka, but it is one of the first real breaks parents have seen in skyrocketing college tuition and shows that some schools are beginning to get more creative.
These are not schools with the hefty endowment or the elite student profile of a Williams College or Grinnell College. They are mostly schools, while academically solid and possessing long traditions, that have experienced flat or declining enrollments as their tuition has crept upward.
Nevertheless, the rollback is earning schools like Eureka, which is perhaps best known outside Illinois as a "Jeopardy" answer (what is the alma mater of President Ronald Reagan?), closer looks from talented high school students like Terry Vaughn, 18.
Vaughn, who said he is weighing offers from schools including Bradley University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, calls Eureka's lower tuition a "huge positive."
"It makes the school more appealing to most students, like myself, who have to take into consideration overall costs as one of their highest priorities when finding a school," said Vaughn, a senior at
East Peoria High School and a semifinalist for a four-year scholarship at Eureka named after the Class of 1932's most famous graduate: Reagan.
Following the successful lead of Muskingum College in Ohio, schools like Eureka hope the price cut will fill more seats with students who may have landed in a state school or a competing private college.
Put bluntly, schools are looking to drive up revenue at the same time they separate themselves from the competition.
"If you get 25 percent more applicants, then you are doing what you wanted to do," said Jeff Zellers, dean of enrollment at Muskingum. Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., jumped to 821 students from 650 after it dropped tuition by more than $3,000.
College officials said lowering the tuition price tag only makes sense because fewer and fewer students actually pay full tuition at their schools.
Officials said that "discounting," the often murky practice of bundling grants and scholarships to reduce the actual tuition cost, has reached epidemic proportions, with only a fraction of students paying full fare.
The radical notion of cutting -- rather than hiking -- tuition first emerged in the mid-1990s in New Concord, Ohio, where officials at Muskingum College, the alma mater of U.S. senator and astronaut John Glenn, began fretting about the liberal arts college's future.
Muskingum's Zellers said the school wasn't in bad shape. The college had just completed a $38 million capital campaign and enrollment was around 1,000.
But college officials saw a disturbing trend: Only 10 percent of Muskingum students were paying full tuition.
"Why not consider this?" Zellers said of cutting tuition.
Concerns over public perception emerged as one of school officials' primary worries. College officials talk about the "Reverse Chivas" effect: Low price means low quality.
To probe how the price cut would be perceived, Muskingum ordered a Gallup poll, and interviewers contacted 600 families with high school seniors interested in the college. Respondents, who weren't told that Muskingum was behind the poll, were asked what they would think about a school that cut its tuition.
The results were overwhelmingly positive, Zellers said.
"The fear we had about the fact we might be looked at as a school doing this in desperation _ that's not how the public would perceive us," he said.
Muskingum made the announcement in November 1995 that it was reducing its tuition by $4,000 _ to $9,850 from $13,850 _ for the next fall and the school enrolled one its largest classes in 25 years.
Subsequent classes have also grown, and enrollment has mushroomed to around 1,550, where the school will stay, Zellers said. He said tuition cuts work at schools "that are solid to begin with."
"If more people look, the college will sell itself," he said.
That is what administrators at Eureka are hoping for.
The school, which celebrates its 150th anniversary next year, typically receives 800 applications and enrolls about 125 freshmen. Eureka only enrolled 91 freshmen last year after a tuition increase and cut in financial aid discouraged students from attending.
Sajko and Eureka President Paul Lister said they want the school to shed its image as "a best-kept secret," and they think the tuition plan will help create the buzz to do just that.
"It's going to demonstrate the value of what we do," Lister said. "It's hard to understand the value of something if you don't know what the price is, and this tuition (program) will allow people to understand very clearly and very simply what the price is."
© 2004, Chicago Tribune |
