Private colleges cut tuition and drop loans to draw wary families

Experts say the moves generate buzz but rarely lift enrollment

Carroll leads with a 40% cut

Carroll College in Montana will reduce its tuition by 40% starting in fall 2027, bringing annual tuition and fees to $26,800 — a figure President Jennifer Glowienka called “closer to reality” because it remains comparable to out-of-state public tuition while still leaving room for scholarships. The new cost will make Carroll no longer the most expensive college in Montana based on published tuition. Glowienka told The Wall Street Journal that administrators spent years weighing pricing scenarios and modeling enrollment projections before settling on the reduction. The school concluded that students were “self-selecting out” by opting not to apply and see their aid package. Erik Rose, Carroll’s associate vice president of enrollment, said going lower would have constrained the school’s ability to award aid for merit and athletics. “If we went too much smaller in terms of that net sticker price or that total price, it starts to restrict our ability to offer financial aid for things like merit and athletics,” he said.

Coe follows with an even steeper reset

Coe College in Iowa announced a roughly 45% cut to $31,850, also beginning next fall. President David Hayes said the previous cost was “scaring people away.” National Center for Education Statistics data for 2023-24 showed that no Coe students paid full price that year, and average aid per student totaled more than $40,000. Hayes called the reset “a better strategy than the status quo, in terms of our enrollment,” though he framed the tuition reduction as one piece of a broader enrollment strategy rather than a standalone fix.

Removing loans from the package

Carleton College in Minnesota said this month it would eliminate loans from financial-aid packages starting in fall 2027, meeting student need through grants, scholarships, and employment. President Alison Byerly said Carleton had to educate donors — many from an older generation who did not view student debt as problematic — about why the issue is alarming to today’s college-goers. The school showed donors market-research data about how debt fears led prospective students to choose other institutions. “They think this one will be too expensive,” Byerly said. “They don’t wait to get the financial-aid package. They just walk away.” Carleton joined a small group of colleges with similar loan-free promises, including all Ivy League institutions, Amherst College, and Williams College, each with varying income cutoffs.

In-state-style rates spread east

Marist University, in the Hudson Valley, said this month that students from New York would not pay more than $32,000 a year for tuition, housing, and dining, provided their families earned less than $200,000. The move, effective in 2027, was intended to make Marist more competitive with the state’s public universities. President Kevin Weinman said the income threshold was set to lure students who seemed interested in attending but did not apply for financial reasons, including low- and middle-income families who often felt the school was out of reach. “They don’t give us a look, from the very beginning,” he said. Union College in New York deployed a different strategy, promising $30,000 annual scholarships to “virtually any” student from the state. Two public schools, Towson University in Maryland and the University of Vermont, recently touted roughly 35% discounts for students from neighboring states.

Buzz, not necessarily lasting gains

Higher-education analysts said the announcements typically generate an initial wave of attention without producing sustained enrollment increases. A recent S&P Global Ratings report found that changes in the cost of attendance can sway individual students but do not broadly correlate with boosted enrollment. Brett Schraeder, vice president of financial-aid optimization at consultant EAB, said schools are thinking not only about competitors “but just to get families to sit up and pay attention.” Sandy Baum, a higher-education economist and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, noted that families have long associated price with quality. A tuition cut once carried risk because a school handing out $10,000 in scholarships seemed more prestigious than one whose sticker price was $10,000 lower. Students “feel good, because they got a scholarship,” Baum said. “This is the tug of war in the higher-ed space,” Schraeder said.

Even elite schools take a second look

The repricing push is also reaching high-profile institutions. Cornell University’s recent report on the future of higher education called for a task force to examine whether tuition should be lowered and merit aid introduced.

Who shows up after the sticker falls

Cutting tuition also reshapes the composition of the student body. A study in the Review of Higher Education found that schools that reduced their sticker price by a notable amount saw a 6.5% increase in the share of Pell Grant recipients — federal aid that typically goes to lower-income families. Schraeder said more middle-class families are looking closely at public colleges, and some private schools think mimicking in-state rates can help capture them.

“It does feel like a sea change right now,” Glowienka said.