Tuition Price Hikes for Private Colleges and Universities

If you are stressing about how to pay for your child’s bachelor’s degree, the news today from an association of private colleges and universities isn’t going to make you break out the champagne at dinner tonight.

In a self-congratulatory press release, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, announced that the average tuition increase among private colleges and universities was only 4.3% for the 2009-2010 school year.

If 4.3% sounds high to you, you’re obviously a parent.

To a college administrator, the rate hike is teeny tiny. In fact, private schools haven’t shown this much restraint in holding down tuitions since 1972.

Here is news, however, that’s a little more encouraging. During the same period, private schools increased their financial aid budgets by an average of 9%.

As I mentioned in one of my previous college blog posts, many private schools have tried exceedingly hard to not only maintain their pots of financial aid and merit cash during these tough times, but also fatten them.

Private institutions are petrified that families are going to blindly accept conventional wisdom that state schools are the only way to afford college during this recession. With private colleges discounting tuition like crazy, that’s certainly not true, but reality won’t matter if parents eliminate options before even considering them.

Learn how to cut the cost of private and public college and universities by reading my book, The College Solution. Lynn O’Shaughnessy