Most colleges have very opaque pricing. The tuition amounts stated are almost always subject to variable discounting, making it hard for students and families to figure out how much their college degrees will actually cost. Is this good or bad?
In today’s Martin Center article, Reagan Allen examines this question.
Public universities have spent years insisting that rising tuition is unavoidable. State funding, they say, hasn’t kept pace. Costs are up, and quality must be maintained. But a new brief from Higher Ed Insight (HEI) shows what has happened alongside those arguments: Public universities are quietly adopting pricing practices long associated with private colleges, relying heavily on tuition discounting to manage enrollment and revenue.
Often, this pricing strategy is used to lure out-of-state students, to the detriment of those who are residents of the state. Shouldn’t tuition be clear without games and gimmicks? Allen thinks so. But, she adds,
Transparency alone will not fix the problem. Tuition discounting is ultimately a workaround, not a solution. It allows institutions to avoid hard conversations about costs, priorities, and who public universities are meant to serve.