The name recognition and financial resources of the most expensive institutions insulate them, to some degree, from market forces. They were there first and enjoy a monopoly of sorts. Outside this relative handful, however, colleges actively vie with each other for the better students in the pool, independent of their ability to pay.
The hundreds of private colleges scattered across the country have an appealing product to sell. Predominantly and often exclusively undergraduate institutions, their classes are smaller and usually taught by professors rather than graduate students or adjuncts. The absence of advanced-degree programs creates opportunities for undergraduates to work with their professors more closely. Students with a variety of extracurricular interests often find room to pursue them without the expectation that they be standouts in each area.
Many of these colleges offer so-called merit aid to applicants who have taken challenging courses in high school, earned strong grades, and scored well on the SATs or ACTs. These tuition discounts can range from a small fraction of the total to $20,000 a year or more. Their purpose is to increase the likelihood that the recipients will enroll.
Responding to the attractions of the small-college model, public universities have created "honors colleges." They attempt to provide the best of both worlds - the resources of a big university and the personal touch of a smaller one. Some honors programs consist primarily of a set of courses open only to eligible students. Others come with all the bells and whistles - early class registration privileges, separate dormitories, designated faculty advisers, special academic and social programs, and even funded travel.
Some private colleges use both discounting and special programs to woo students. Since state universities charge significantly less than their private counterparts, their discounts are built in.
After the 2008 financial crisis, many larger state universities experienced a spike in applications. In quite a few cases, those universities saw even larger increases in their honors-college pools. Stronger students who had been focusing on private institutions were seeking more affordable options.
Competition is alive and well in higher education. Excellent alternatives to the most expensive colleges and universities are available at about half the cost, sometimes less. They're still not cheap by any means, but they are at least within range of a larger segment of the middle class.
Grant Calder is a teacher and college counselor at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood.
