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The marketplace spoke.
BSC listened.
Tuition price drops 50 percent
to wipe out “sticker shock”
By Amy L. Foster
While colleges and universities throughout the nation
will raise their published price yet again next year,
Birmingham-Southern will instead reset tuition back to
what it was more than 15 years ago: $17,650.
In doing so, BSC is taking the lead among America’s
prestigious colleges and universities to respond to
national concerns about college affordability.
It’s one thing to scroll through an online article or watch a TV report
about the skyrocketing price of college. But that doesn’t capture what it feels
like for a family trying to select a college.
Imagine a student who will be the rst in her family to attend college,
who has discovered she will thrive better at a small school that can provide
her with personalized learning, advising, and mentoring. But she sees a
published price at private colleges that would eat up more than half of her
family’s annual income—and her heart sinks.
Picture a parent who recalls how he managed to work his way through
summers to pay for college. But now the tuition price he sees gives him a
stab of fear that there’s no way his son will be able to do the same.
Or what about a mom who attended BSC and wants that for her child,
too. But she’s stunned to discover that the price at private colleges has more
than doubled since she graduated—and despairs that there’s no way her
family can pay that much.
This is sticker shock.
It happens because too few families understand how pricing actually
works at most private colleges and universities. They just see the bottom line
and assume they can’t afford them.