A recent article in The Observer would suggest Fordham students are:
Fordham students have had to adjust their financial plans for the 2025-26 school year after the university’s 4.65% tuition increase last semester. Several have sought additional employment, financial aid appeals and even transferred out of Fordham. The exact number of students who have transferred due to financial concerns has not been made available.
On March 31, the university announced a 4.65% tuition hike via email, bumping yearly tuition up to $65,000. Room fees also increased by 4.3%, and meal plan costs went up by 4%.
[LATER EDIT]: As the community reported this phenomenon is not specific to Fordham, I’m opening up the discussion to include other colleges or universities.
I’ve had students at 6 universities, 4% seems like a normal yearly hike. One of the schools froze in state tuition the 4 years my daughter was there, but she’s OOS. Our in state schools raised tuition and r/b every year.
Sadly, if you can’t afford a 4% hike, then you chose the wrong school to begin with….another example of kids over stretching themselves.
College is a commodity - they can obtain their education elsewhere, likely at less expense.
Fordham acknowledges up front that 65% of kids have need but only 30% have their need met - and we don’t know what that amount is (maybe they are meeting those who require less).
Buyer beware - This isn’t really a Fordham issue but rather widespread.
But as consumers, many are failing.
Maybe college planning for parents and students (a formal course, not a night time meeting) should be offered for families during high school.
Agreed. Fordham is an expensive school in an expensive city, and Fordham doesn’t have the endowment to meet full need. And a lot of the need aid they do give goes toward their traditional mission of educating local (Bronx) students who commute.
Every year there are students who leave Fordham due to the cost. Usually it’s a case of families signing on to pay more than they should because going to school in NY is a dream for their kid. But after a year, the kid realizes that going to school in NY is not the same as being on vacation in NY. And they look at their state flagship that seemed so boring the year before, and it no longer seems so boring, and the COA is $40K a year less. And they realize 40K will buy a lot of vacations to NY, among other things.
I think it’s a little misleading to focus the conversation on Fordham. Students reconsider EVERY college when there is a tuition hike. I have a neighbor whose kid was at the flagship state U; freshman year was fine but not the “Disneyland Nirvana” she hoped for. And the price hike (student activity fee, health care fee, dorm fee, meal plan fee) which was just a ton of “death by a thousand cuts”- small increases leading to a hefty overall increase… the kid is now home, commuting to a local branch of the state U. Not as prestigious, not as many departments, much more limited academic breadth and depth…. but bus fare plus tuition is affordable for them.
The article I shared focuses specifically on Fordham that why I made it specific to this school.
Are there reports from other schools that have hiked tuition recently? If yes, I can make this into a generic convo and move it to Applying to College > College Headlines.
I feel like this is a post that should be shared on many posts - especially as kids outstretch themselves.
I especially took note of this exchange - because while I’m sure the student is frustrated, scared, and without options, the school isn’t wrong - and while we talk about non-custodial parents or just parents not interested in paying, that’s not really the school’s problem as they are not charities.
Not easy for an 18 or 20 year old to understand:
Williams said she had an “incredibly rude” conversation on the phone with the Office of Financial Aid regarding her appeal. She told the representative that her housing costs have gone up unsustainably after transferring to Lincoln Center from the Rose Hill campus and that her father is no longer supporting her financially.
“I’m on the phone with this lady from financial aid, and she’s like, ‘Oh, just because daddy’s not paying for school doesn’t mean that you get to just get money from us,’” Williams said. “I just felt like all my options had been closed in on me and that I couldn’t come back to school.”
But why should it be this way? My daughter attends a UC. When she entered, she became part of a “tuition cohort,” which means that her tuition amount is locked in for her four years of attendance. Tuition at the UC does goes up each year, but current students are not on the hook for that and aren’t forced to scramble to come up with the difference. They pay the tuition they agreed to pay when they matriculated. Of course, this is a public school so the tuition and financial aid structure is a bit different than at private universities. By why can’t private universities do the same?
Big picture, average college costs (so this is including aid) adjusted for inflation had been in a general downward trend since circa 2016-17.
Then during the unexpected inflation spike, this drove down the inflation-adjusted average college cost trend even further, as colleges did not leap to keep pace with the spike.
Then this cycle, it looks like the average might go up in inflation-adjusted terms (although we won’t know for sure for a while because aid data is not immediately reported). Probably not nearly enough yet, however, to reverse the total inflation-adjusted reduction that happened during the inflation spike, let alone all the way back to 2016-17.
Just guessing, but I suspect we may at least be due several years of above-inflation average cost increases, on theory colleges will sort of be gradually smoothing in the unexpected inflation spike.
But where they end up in the long term, I don’t know. Maybe we will get back to the trend that started 2016-17, which would be nice. Maybe the recent turmoil in higher ed funding has ended that era, and we may get back to the pre-2016-17 trend of costs increasing faster than inflation. That would be not so nice.
They could, but their budgets are their budgets and net tuition is part of their operating budget. So presumably what they would do is increase your first-year tuition so that your estimated four-year tuition would be about the same. Like if it would be 4% higher each year (not compounding) if not fixed, they would make it 6% higher in the first year if fixed, which works out the same over four years.
At a guess, if all the privates could agree to do this at once without violating antitrust laws, they might! However, because they likely can’t do that sort of agreement, then they might see unilaterally doing the one-time 6% increase (or whatever) as too much of a competitive issue.
You might think that doesn’t make much sense, but I think it is plausible as a bunch of people I encounter actually don’t seem to be really thinking about the total four-year cost after possible increases, just the current cost. If enough college consumers are “near-sighted” in this way, then that could in fact be a competitive issue if you do that unilaterally.
Some do. For example, in the past, if you could pay for all four years tuition at Skidmore was the same for all four years. A little different than a freeze…because you would need the money up front.
The Ohio schools you refer to are also public universities…and have the Ohio Promise (I think that’s what it’s called). Tuition frozen at the amount for your freshman year. BUT room and board costs can (and often do) increase).
But in this case, it’s an increase because you have lost income…ie. investing the money in a one year CD, 2 year CD, 3 year CD - so when they mature, you’ve made money).
In this case, Skidmore is just investing the money at a return or using it instead of borrowing - thus saving interest.
The person paying the four years up front has lost income although that income may have been lost due to an annual increase - so yes, the price is the same, but it really isn’t. Skidmore is making money on overpaid receivables - and each year, they remove 25% of that receivable.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for colleges to increase tuition when over the 4 typical years of a degree, a lot of costs are going to be rising, from salaries to physical goods, insurance etc. While I think it’s great for those colleges that lock tuition in, I’d be surprised if they haven’t budgeted it so that their total revenue over those 4 years is roughly the same as it would have been (obviously starting lower than the initial cost the student saw in freshman year). (The benefit being the paying family exactly knows their budget.) And as noted, public colleges probably have more of a buffer if they underestimate this than privates.
They have lost assets if paying out of assets. But some folks prefer to do this. Personal family preference.
We knew up front that costs for college could (and did) increase 4-6% a year while our kids were in college (youngest graduated undergrad in 2010). It’s the way it was.
List price tuition increases may be bothersome to those paying list price, or those with fixed amount merit scholarships, but students on financial aid may be more concerned about the risk of the college reducing financial aid, which can effectively increase their (net) price.
If parental income is volatile, then that can affect financial aid calculations year to year.
But some people complain about some colleges doing that even without significant changes in parent and student finances. If that is true, then it may be that those colleges give good FA offers to attract students, but reduce them in later years since the students are “locked in” and not that willing to drop out or transfer out (but some may if the net price increases are too high).
But it is likely the tuition for the first year is inflated because they know they can’t raise it for the next 4 years for that student. Likely paying higher for first year (or 2) and then the ‘right’ amount for the last two, averaging the ‘correct’ amount over the 4 years. So if someone doesn’t stay all 4 years, they’ve overpaid for the time they were there.
And the tuition is fixed but are the fees, housing, food? One daughter’s tuition went up $2000/yr, but her student fees never did and housing and food actually went down (they really screw the freshmen IMO). Other daughter’s tuition remained low and her fees went up just a little, probably reflecting the actual costs.