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From the data I have seen, there was a notable shift in the dynamic sometime around 2016-17 or so.
The fact so few people seem to know this would not normally be a huge problem, but as the article points out, students from low (or indeed middle) income families may not always realize what their most affordable options would actually be. Net Price Calculators were supposed to help with that, but we see here regularly that a lot of people seem basically unaware of NPCs and why they should be using them.
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Yes. The posts âonly 35% of students get aid so I wonât bother applyingâ when the school in question meets full need and the student comes from a low income family really show how poorly understood the NPCâs are. And the reverse of course is true-- the students convinced theyâre going to get a free ride when the numbers show that they wonât (but they generally have other options).
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Itâs frustrating that more colleges donât include something on their admission checklist like, âthose needing financial aid should really try our NPC for an estimate.â The NPC is never mentioned on the admissions pages, only on the financial aid pages, and amazingly some kids never look at either section of the website anyway.
Thinking out loud: do colleges have a disincentive to communicate what an actual price is likely to be? Might that interfere with their ability to stay need-blind if âtoo manyâ realized the schoolâs affordability? Might the estimate also discourage donut-hole prospective applicants? Etc.
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This was one of the most shocking things to me when I first dove back into this world to help out my S24. I eventually figured out these kids basically donât do Web 1.0 stuff regularly, they mostly just get information from interactive peer stuff like Reddit, YouTube or TikTok videos, or whatever. But the schools seem to be basically assuming kids will go to their websites, look through FAQs, and so onâstuff that might as well be dialing a rotary phone as far as these kids are concerned.
I also have encountered what appears to me to be a basic trust issueâso many people seem to have the attitude that sure, an institution might say something on its website, but the REAL truth is going to be something different, and you need someone outside the institution, but who nonetheless claims to have special access, to tell you the real stuff.
So yes, this seems like a massive, systematic communications problem. And I think colleges really need to be thinking about how to communicate more effectively to prospective applicants in the ways they actually use and trust. Particularly if they are interested in applicants who do not have college-educated parents who are very comfortable with Web 1.0 stuff.
Thatâs an interesting question. At a high level, I think most âneed blindâ schools are not too worried about staying on budget because they know so few needy applicants will have the âobjectiveâ markers they are looking for. So, like, de facto requiring high test scores and/or a lot of APs or equivalent is going to filter for low need enrollees without any additional thumb on the scale. And of course in general these schools like to talk about their generous need policies to potential donors and in other PR contexts.
But not everyone applies to every college, so possibly if one college in a competitive set stood out too much in terms of public perception, it could get too big a share of higher need applicants. Iâm not sure whether or not that is a live concern, but it is always notable how these colleges tend to seem much more similar than different when it comes to their communication efforts.
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There are numerous studies about other financial decisions; I am not aware of any that deal with financial aid specifically.
BUT- the research tends to show that no matter what the arena (mortgage, property insurance, participation in a company sponsored 401K with âfree moneyâ aka a match, making the proper tax withholding so you arenât lending the federal government money with zero interest⊠etc.) there is a hard core and significant group of people who refuse to read. Itâs just that simple. They buy extra coverage to insure a TV which is already covered because of the credit card they used; they buy dental insurance even though the numbers clearly show itâs a bad financial deal for their family; they have an ex-spouse listed as their beneficiary on their life insurance because they refuse to read and then fill out a form (a five minute exercise) to list the proper beneficiary, etc.
what are you gonna do? The colleges have likely seen the same studies and have concluded that for a chunk of the population, no matter how much data you offer and no matter how many carrots you put in front of them, theyâll refuse to read and absorb the information.
Why would someone turn down free money at work? And yet so many people just cannot be bothered. Does your company offer subsidized public transportation (many do) and wouldnât you think that every single person that takes the train to the office would participate (itâs not a match- itâs LITERALLY free money after filling out a two minute form). And yetâŠ
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I hear you. But, it seems like a lot of folks donât know the NPC exists. High school counseling may not inform students in their college application powerpoints/PDFs, etc. I think they want to stay out of the financial side of things. I just checked the junior presentation for one of my kidâs schools - itâs not in there. Part of me really wants to point this out to the college counselor, even though itâs not relevant for us.
But then there are some states demanding that students submit FAFSA to graduate from high school. It would seem straightforward to simply explain, âYou want to know the actual prices? Here is how to find them, and here are some examplesâŠâ
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Sorry to go off topic. On the question of the cost of college going down, that is really very individual, for both the student and the college. For full pay at highly selective schools, no, itâs not going down. Iâm not complaining, just pointing out the reality that those in search of merit discounts need to look outside of highly selective schools, probably outside of T100. I remember not that many years ago when my oldest kidâs school had a cost of attendance somewhere in the mid 70s and people in forums like this one were speculating about costs hitting 100k per year, and I admit I didnât see this level of inflation coming. But, here we are, really inches away from that, and my current college freshmanâs school, in the mid 90s, will probably hit 100k before he graduates. Which is fine (for us), but definitely not going down.
Iâll add that significant cost of living increases, due to inflation alone, make it difficult to claim that the cost of a degree is going down.
I only skimmed the article, but I think the basic advice for those looking for bargains is to look for colleges that need customers like your student. There have been blogs/books/discussions about âbuyersâ and âsellers.â
Purely anecdotal, but from my experience over the last couple years, for sure there are some people who for whatever reason seem reluctant to use NPCs no matter what information you give them. But there are others who just didnât know about them until someone in these conversations pointed them out and explained how to use them, and then once that happened they were happy to make checking NPCs a regular part of the process.
So maybe the colleges canât do anything about the first group, but to me the second group is maybe more promising. It just seems unfortunate to me those people had to learn about NPCs from a community like this, because I know only some fraction of them are going to find such a community. So I would at least like to believe colleges, maybe high schools, and so on could figure out how to reach more of those people systematically, such that we would less often be the ones playing that role.
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Great conversation.
Neither of our kids high schools mentioned NPC in college presentations to parents, or kids. I learned about it here on CC. 
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This 
!! But I imagine even with a poppy TikTok about NPCâs itâs still not what kids want to hear about - not nearly as compelling as the âadmissions revealâ videos.
And youâve got to wonder if the lack of NPC info on college admissions pages has something to do with not dissuading applicants in order to boost their profile. (Our biggest applicant year ever!)
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Back in the dark ages (before social media but after websites), Brown used to publish granular data on âwho applied, who got inâ. Not just âtop quartile SAT scoresâ but actually showing who got in- 1600 composite scores had a 90% admit rate, 1580 had a 85% admit rate (Iâm making these numbers up). It showed the admit rate for Vals, Sals, kids in the top 5%. So not just â85% of our students were Vals or Salsâ, it showed the helpful number âVals were rejected 35% of the timeâ or whatever the numbers were.
Every year my regional adcom would ask the interviewers for feedback on our interview âseasonâ, and many of us listed âStudents want granular data on who applied and who gets inâ. Never mind that the information was three clicks away; never mind that most kids couldnât be bothered to read the website at all, let alone look for actual, helpful information.
I just scratched my head. And this thread is making me scratch it again. The generation that wonât buy a bottle of shampoo without extensive âresearchâ (i.e. reading 100 customer reviews on Amazon and watching several influencers use said shampoo) wonât look on the collegeâs website to answer the question âHow much will this place cost my family?â
I just donât believe that any amount of âletâs make this user friendlyâ will combat the sheer inertia. Kids donât WANT to know how much will it cost, no matter how easy it is to figure it out. Parents would rather brag to their friends âSusie is hoping to get into XYZ collegeâ with nary a worry as to how they will pay for XYZ college.
More research on âwho makes the best Pad Thai in my neighborhoodâ than ANYTHING having to do with college!
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I donât buy into the article. Yes, many families are getting merit aid to reduce the sticker price of schools. But, merit does not increase as the cost of the school increases. My S24 gets 25K in merit from Denison, but I just saw that their tuition/room/board is increasing 5K for the 2025-26 school year. Assuming it increases about that much for his entire stay, the 25K merit becomes a lesser piece of the pie.
I would also say the NPC is a pretty rough estimator - especially for schools which use the CSS profile. Iâve had packages come back all over the board compared to what the NPC showed. I think many schools donât update the calculators on an annual basis.
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Since the US in general has low and declining trust, this particular phenomenon is not surprising. It also means that what people see as the âREAL truthâ that they got from some random social media influencer is often quite far from the actual truth.
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But you understood that going in, right? maybe not specifically that it would be $5K/year but that the school had seen a X%-Y% YoY increase in tuition and knew that the merit award didnât similarly change.
Of course this brings up another thought - how often do applicants get a great merit award but also need FA and donât understand that at most schools the numbers donât stack.
I weigh out how much time/effort Iâm going to spend on a topic (i.e. college) based in large part on the potential costs. Iâm hugely thankful of CC as it helped point me in directions I was unaware to look.
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Or stack to only a limited extent. It is somewhat common that merit scholarships can be used to replace expected student loan and student work amounts first, but expected parent contribution last after replacing institutional financial aid grants.
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Working in financial aid, I was careful not to promise that our school would be affordable. Affordable means different things to different people. Schools can sometimes be less expensive than you might think, but then again, they might be more expensive than you might think. The NPC might give you the spot-on number, or you might have a business & find that it was way off. Or you might think itâs too expensive but the NPC didnât reflect merit. Itâs a really difficult topic. If I tell you that our school costs an average of 40% of the sticker price & it costs you 100%, you may well feel angry. The best we can do is have the tools available and encourage students to use them.
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Since The College Board provides both the CSS Profile and an NPC template, one would think that colleges using the CSS Profile would use The College Board NPC template, which is one of the most detailed ones. But some colleges that use the CSS Profile use less detailed NPC templates.
I was actually surprised to learn how the regulations work, and the resulting lack of accuracy they might allow in some cases.
I went round and round with someone on Reddit over this topic. She 100% assumed that they would get financial aid even if the merit award gave them enough to be close to EFC. I tried to explain to her that FA packages encompass both merit and need based aid to get to what the school determines to be the studentâs need. Eventually she asked the school in question and they told her the same.
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I donât believe the article is right. Among people I know in Bay Area, everybody is full pay at UCs ($40K) or CSUs ($30K). I also know someone paying close to $100K at Northeastern. How is the cost of college going down? Am I missing something here?