I often think it is worth remembering that US colleges, not least private colleges and the OOS programs of publics, are in fact participating in the competitive capitalist market economy. Indeed, everyone who ever talks about colleges in terms of “return on investment” and similar concepts is implicitly embracing that fact, which is fine.
And as that article documents, that means there is in fact price competition occurring, and pretty sophisticated price competition in fact. This is part of why I find generic “return on investment” rankings and such so pointless. Your individual “ROI” is a function of your individual “I”, and your individual “I” is determined by what a given college offers you in terms of a net COA. Whatever the college’s average net COA is not material, it is your actual net COA that matters for such a calculation.
And you can choose to treat all this as unseemly, but I see opportunity. In fact, I wish more kids and parents I encountered online saw the benefits of a kid working hard in HS to develop a very competitive application profile as including the likely ability to use that profile to generate better pricing options. So much focus is basically on using such profiles to generate admissions to colleges ranked higher by the US News or such. But to me, often the more concrete benefit is the ability of such kids to get offers from privates and OOS programs and such that may meet or indeed beat in-state options.
In other words, price competition is good for consumers! Obviously don’t fall for marketing gimmicks like comparing discount amounts rather than actual net prices. But to the extent you can benefit from colleges competing to get you as a student in the form of actually lower net prices, good for you!
Dang, I had to do all the guesswork regarding how to manage tuition discounting myself. I did not get help from anyone, much less a private equity firm. I really should have been paid more!
I know two families who did well negotiating with small, lesser-known privates (and this was quite a few years ago). One went to Hobart & William Smith. The student was their HS valedictorian and had several impressive admits elsewhere which the family used a leverage to get a better offer from Hobart (the student really wanted to attend there).
The other went to Anderson in SC. The dad was able to get the cost down to an in-state equivalent. This was almost 10 years ago, and I don’t think Anderson was very popular back then. This was a high-stat student so I’m guessing Anderson was happy to give more to get them (spoiler - they transferred after 2 years to our in-state flagship because Anderson was a ghost town on weekends).
I don’t think the strategy necessarily works at popular large publics or T25 privates. I occasionally hear of someone getting a couple of thousand more at a large public but generally no throwing of money except to maybe a few top students who are well above the average stat range.
I’m more intrigued by the families who apply to the notoriously stingy colleges & universities and are then incredulous when their “star” isn’t offered a generous scholarship.
FWIW, I’ve heard of a couple stories now of this year kids requesting more merit at Rutgers and getting it. Caught me by surprise because I’m used to Rutgers not offering much in the way of scholarships except for their Honors College. I guess now they feel like they have to or want to compete.
I’m not sure Rutgers is all that popular outside NJ and surrounding states.
I interpreted @CollegeNerd67’s statement as referring to public schools that get a lot of applications from all over the country (like Michigan, GT, UIUC, UCB, UCLA, etc).
My kids are 8 years apart. When my oldest was applying back in 2012, she received more favorable merit offers from publics that would be similar to Rutgers. When my youngest was applying in 2020 to some of those same colleges, which had become way more popular since older D applied, she saw less merit despite having higher stats. I’m sure that had to do with those colleges starting to see record application numbers. They no longer had to give aggressive merit offers to entice students to come.
It’s definitely possible that if a public U sees a decline in popularity, they can decide to ramp up merit offers.
Pitt is a good example of a public that has gotten more popular and as a result has explicitly shifted a higher share of its aid money to need over merit.
Unless everyone gets the $30k merit automatically, no it’s not the same.
One school that does do that (automatic to everyone) is Cooper Union (tuition used to be free, now part pay, they are intending to go back to free at some stage in the next few years and are already doing that for seniors). It may just be marketing but I think they also need to put some value on what they provide?
The cost of tuition at The Cooper Union for the 2024 – 2025 academic year is $44,550.
Each admitted student receives a half-tuition scholarship valued at $22,275 per year.
I have a friend who worked for Cooper Union for many years. He claims extreme financial mismanagement but if donors give enough, I guess it doesn’t matter.
I had heard financial mismanagement was what had led to them charging tuition again. (Didn’t look into it too deeply as with a 4% admit rate for architecture it’s not very likely for C26.)