A 2013 report by Sallie Mae and Ipsos Public Affairs found that between 2009 and 2012, the proportion of families ruling out colleges based on price increased from about 53 percent to 69 percent.
While Hirsch says she hopes resetting tuition attracts additional students, especially those who normally wouldn’t have considered the school because of its high costs, she said the decision wasn’t made solely to attract more students – the number of students attending Rosemont has increased each year for the last four years.
“It’s hard to criticize any school for cutting its tuition,” says Stephen Burd, senior higher education policy analyst at New America, a Washington think-tank. “The only thing that worries me when schools do this is whether low-income students are going to really benefit from it. Even if you cut tuition to $18,000, it will still be very difficult for low-income students to attend even if they get some kind of financial aid.”
Burd also warns that some colleges that have adopted similar rescheduling of tuition costs have actually seen their enrollment decrease because people, wrongfully, associate a drop in tuition with a drop in quality.
Meanwhile, other schools that have attempted similar tuition cuts have struggled to maintain the new price tag. Sewanee–University of the South, which cuts its tuition in 2011, from $46,100 to $41,500, saw tuition return to its original cost after just two years.