University Business - October 2011 - (Page 39)

high published costs of their education by indicating to the majority of families who apply that, should they get in, they will not be paying that sticker price. If standardized and clear enough (big if ’s at this point), the calculators should allow families to more accurately estimate and compare their out-of-pocket costs, and possible eventual loan debt at various institutions, both those of different types (public, private, two- and four-year, in- and out-of-state, and so on) and those that seem similar in many respects (comparable private liberal arts colleges, for example) but which have significant variance in their pricing and discount models, use of need-based and merit-based aid, and so on. Families will then need to grapple with whether a college is need-blind in admissions and exactly what that means, and whether the college meets 100 percent of need. This could force institutions to follow Sewanee’s lead and consider the “bidding war” approach they have been taking and either lower their stated price or seek to increase the amount of aid available to more students, or both. Families with younger children should also be able to forecast their college costs more accurately, which, we hope, will lead them to save more, and apply to more institutions they thought to be out of reach. Again, however, it is imperative that colleges and universities make information more readily available and comprehensible to the average family. Yet the mire of information and process this family—with college-educated parents and some means to afford most of the cost of many colleges— would need to wade through was clearly daunting. Compound that scenario for a first-generation collegebound student, an international student, a family speaking English as a second language, a single-parent family, a returning veteran, or a student at a high school (like many) with little to no access to college or financial aid advising, and you have a substantial array of hurdles blocking or deterring families from considering and applying to colleges they could afford with the right amount of assistance. There was a lot of press earlier in the year touting the creation of the net price calculators now mandated for every college website. But where is the emphasis on this information now? A Sept. 9, 2011 article in “The Choice”, a New York Times blog, did raise awareness about NPCs, and about some of the challenges families will face in comparing colleges with them. But are colleges putting the calculators front and center on their home page or, at the least, their first admission page, and explaining them adequately? In most cases, we don’t think so. The adoption of these calculators is a move in the right direction in terms of showing families how much they really are likely to pay at various institutions. This can certainly help those schools with substantial endowments which they are using to defray the universitybusiness.com Tuition Decision Considerations Getting back to tuition setting itself, the likely increase in transparency that will accompany the move toward comparable net price calculators should suggest to college and university officials that they reconsider: how they are structuring their tuition and fees; what type or types of need- and/or non-need-based financial assistance they are offering and to whom; and how this will impact the composition of the class they enroll and retain annually. Here are several questions to consider. • Who is involved in tuition-setting discussions? According to Monica Inzer, dean of admission and financial aid at Hamilton College (N.Y.), colleges should consider the key stakeholders in the budgeting and tuition-setting process. At Hamilton, she works closely with her chief financial officer to function within a framework clearly established by the board of trustees. In Hamilton’s case, that means following a decision made “spontaneously” during a board meeting in 2007 to drop merit-based aid and concentrate on remaining need-blind in admissions and guaranteeing to meet 100 percent of need. Inzer notes one of Hamilton’s mantras: “We don’t compete on price, we compete on quality.” For the college, that means modeling a variety of scenarios, integrating advice from the faculty’s budget committee, and presenting options to the board and president of the college. “We want to be able to maintain and sustain” what students and graduates expect from Hamilton, says Inzer, with October 2011 | 39 http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - October 2011

University Business - October 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Human Resources
Cloud Email
Tuition Setting
Campus CFO
Independent Outlook
End Note

University Business - October 2011

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