College to raise tuition 7.3pct

Lafalum · College to raise tuition 7.3pct

The College now has a sticker price higher than Harvard's. Our defense is that many of our peers are just as high, as the sticker price of Colgate ,Bucknell, and Lehigh are higher. Our tutiion has been increasing faster than inflation since 1979. At some point there is a ceiling. Is increasing the price of your product in the face of a recesion a smart business practice??
I can't wait for the appeals from development to supplement aid because the school is too expensive for many of our students. ( I undrstand that aid is increasing faster than tuition) In a softer economy that's not going to change.

TheTruth

I don't understand why tuition is going up so much??? I understand how colleges come up with their costs but Lafayette has had tremendous growtih in their endowment since 1995. It does make you wonder what they are doing with the money.

Weiss needs to be careful justifying our tuition increase with comparing costs to Bucknell, colgate, etc. I think Rotberg did that when he increased tutition by 10% one year. He got ousted (or was about to be ousted) the following year.

Lafalum: If I understand you right, we are raising tuition by 7% but more students are qualifying for financial aid and scholarships? Seems counter productive.

Lafalum

That is correct. In 2000 our discount rate (financial aid/tuition room and board x student population) was close to 30 pct, today it is close to 40 pct.
Somehow the "value proposition" has gotten screwed up. We are not better than Harvard so why is our sticker price higher.
Luckily all but one of my kids is finished, he's in grad school and I don't have to worry about it.
My brother,who owns his own company and has a 7 figures maybe 8 figure net worth is quite serious when he tells me cost is a factor in where his sons will go to school. His oldest applied to Lafayette, Penn State, another state school and several Ivies. If choice the comes down to Lafayette or Penn State he would probalbly go to Penn State. The Ivies are a different matter. He has had scholarship offers from two out of state schools. (he's an engineering major 1500 boards).

TheTruth

Tell your brother that his son is much better off with a Lafayette engineering degree over a PSU engineering degree. You'll have to trust me on this one.

If we are going to charge that much, I'd like to see us follow Davidson's model with no student graduating with loans. Our endowment is over $850M. No reason for us to have to increase tuition by 7% especially when you are asking the alumni for $50M for financial aid. Quite honestly, let's try and raise $100M so we can keep the cost of the school affordable. I think the alumni would rally behind that.

Franks Tanks

ericatbucknell

as i have mentioned before on this board, the market for higher education is somewhat unique and in a few ways counter-intuitive. most notable is the price model, which, at least for elite private schools, makes it necessary to charge no less than ones peers. its also a model that indicates that the more expensive a school, the more attractive it will be to students and their parents. a luxury good in some ways, if you want to think of it like that.

so the concept of freezing price increases is great, but in practice it would actually reduce the schools demand and subsequently its student quality. just ask richmond, a very wealthy school that recently raised its tuition substantially to compete with its high cost peers (like lafayette).

its also important to keep in mind that the economic situation of the nation as a whole is somewhat detached from the economic situation of the average lafayette family. it is a lake wobegon world, with approximately 90% of students being of above average wealth. and real income growth of the top 20%/top 5% historically tracks elite private tuition increases pretty well.

anyway, tuition hikes arent going to change any time soon. what is changing, as has been mentioned in this thread, is financial aid. discounting is the big thing right now, and i would be shocked to see lafayette not introduce a no-loan plan (starting with families making under $60,000) in the next couple years. as the money is raised, that number will rise and improved aid calculations for the upper-middle class will be implemented. its a great thing, but its going to take some time as financial aid is incredibly expensive. the no-loan route alone would cost upwards of $5,000,000 per year.

Franks Tanks

DaveR

TheTruth

Don't get me wrong Dave. PSU and Rutgers have great programs but for an undergraduate education, Lafayette's engineering program is superior. This is not just my opinion. I have talked to folks at Lehigh and MIT who will tell you for undergraduate work, Lafayette is better. Smaller classes, taught by PH.d. in all your classes and more opportunity to do independent research. It also helps that we do have a strong influence from the liberal arts. Lafayette does an outstanding job of attracting female engineers as well. We have been featured over the years in magazines and ratings over the years.

Our program develops well rounded engineers that can think on their feet, write well and communicate better then engineers from the big schools. The big schools are very cut throat especially the first two years. They do graduate excellent engineers that know how to design but there is more to the profession then pumping out calculations and fiddling around with AutoCAD.

Also Lafayette engineers tend to make better managers. This goes back to the overall education. We develop better communicators.

I know for a number of years the faculty was concerned that the engineering program was receiving a high portion of Marquis Scholarships. Of course that's because the Directors of Engineering (Jim Schaeffer and Mike Paolino before him) have always worked closely with Admissions recruiting and talking with applicants. So if a high achieving student is visiting campus and is interested in engineering, it is not uncommon for the Director to come over and meet with the family. You don't think that has an impression on the family??? That commitment to the student trickles down into the faculty and even the secretaries and technicians.

having said all of this, how well a student does depends so much on the environment. If your son wants a big campus atmosphere, then Lafayette is not the place for him no matter the engineering program. Make sure your son chooses a school that he feels comfortable. Meaning it has the activities he looking for, the social life he wants, housing, etc. If all of that fits, the academics will take care of itself esp. if he is a straight student.

let me know if you have any other questions. As you can see i

Lafalum

All this is interesting and we are all proud of our alma mater. I am aware of the sticker effect but I am sensing among my friends a resistance to the higher sticker price unless there is real value attached. For better or worse it is percieved that the Ivies and others( Stanford, Duke, et al) with their cache provide that extra value. So I guess my thought is where a family cricumstance would not qualify you for much aid to a Lafayette, and you have a son or daughter who is high achiever, cost is large enough that is becoming a factor.
Oddly enough this probably allows us to compete for the better student athletes resulting in the better well rounded students in our scholarship athletic programs. The other outcome is to go to the alumni and ask them to pay more so we can alter our aid programs to be more generous.
I guess what I am saying there is no cost discipline and that somehow isn't getting addressed in higher education. It's the only industry whose reputation is better the more inefficient they are??
I also am beginning to see creeping in (although it is not a dominant characteristic) faculty where teaching is becoming less improtant than research. Adding to the body of knowledge is a large part of the role of higher education in the United States, my point is at schools like Lafayette that must play a diminished role to educating the undergraduate. Our lowering of graduation requirements (the 4,4 semester vs 5,5 semester) grade inflation ( perhaps a result of faculty laziness) more frequent sabaticals are examples of less empahasis on classroom education. It would be interesting to note that our engineering dept to its credit rejected 4,4 (because it would not meet professonal requirements). I think Weis and Provost Hill are trying to address these problems (raising the level for deans list and greek graduation recognition) but years of June Schlutter and basically benign neglect in previous years, in the name of accomodating a restless faculty have not helped.

Refrider

Today's local paper announced that Lehigh U will be offering more financial aid to it's students:

Loan elimination: Students from families earning up to $50,000 a yr won't have to take out a federal loan. Lehigh will replace those loans with grants

Loan reduction: Students from families who earn $50,000 to $75,000 won't have to borrow any more than $3,000 a yr in federal loans

wORK-STUDY AWARDS: sTUDENTS WHOSE FAMILIES EARN UP TO $75,000 WOULD SEE THEIR WORK-STUDY GRANTS INCREASE BY 25 % TO $2,200 PER YEAR. (type lock error).

This new policy will cost Lehigh an additional $3 million per yr. The university's endowment was $1.1 billion as of January.

TheTruth

I hate to say this but...Good job Lehigh! if they can do it, so can we.

gopardsgo

While I have no doubt that tuition increases constantly outpacing inflation means there are families that can afford Lafayette choose a less expensive school based on their perceived "value for money".

Clearly, there are enough "consumers' out there that feel Lafayette remains good value for money as applications to Lafayette rise and the standards for admission also rise. I understand demographics play a part in this, but it seems that Lafayette (along with some other PL peers) have enjoyed secular growth in apps and selectivity while raising tuition.

Does the College really have a problem? Is the student body composition getting too skewed towards upper class and lower middle class, hollowing out the middle and upper middle class student body? Are we about to fall off a cliff selectivity wise as demographics shift and/or we come to the end of a long bull market? I am interested in your thoughts.

If you feel there is a problem here, what are the ways the College can address it? Going the Harvard et. al model does not really address the posted issue as the tuition difference between Harvard and Lafayette is not THAT significant (read: I doubt that $1-$3k per year difference in tuitions is the swing factor between PSU and Lafayette). Further, the student would not get a free ride under the Harvard model, and at least at Lafayette he has a chance for an academic scholarship (I do not know whether Harvard has academic scholarships and would be surprised if they did given their natural attraction from the 'best and brightest').

Being stuck between the prestige of the Ivy League and the cost of state owned schools seems to be our fate. I think Lafayette has done a pretty good job of establishing its' niche as a school with resources, intimacy, and overall academic and social atmosphere that is attractive.

Of course, we can and always should strive to improve.

Lafalum

Actually there is a significant difference in the harvard model, for those making 180,000 dollars or less you pay 10 pct of the tuition cost. AT 60,000 YOU PAY NOTHING TO GO TO HARVARD. Several of the Ivies have followed. So in real money that about 30K per year for a family making 180K. The difference between an instate PSU tuition and Lafayette is about 20-25 k per year. I really think it was a mistake for us to raise tuition and cut the school population while hiring new professors at the same time. Does not make sense to me fiscally and especially in light of the changes in pricing which we will now have to respond to........Now where will the money come from??????? The fund raising environment is looking bleaker by the day..especially for the amounts the administration is looking at (300m)!!

gopardsgo

I agree there are huge differences between Harvard's model and ours. I was referring to the post about a parent worth high seven perhaps eight figures saying "Lafayette is not worth it. My son will either go to an Ivy or he is off to Penn State". If this was a widely held view the College would be in big trouble to attract tops students.

If the same student had Harvard in mind, presumably they would fall outside Harvard's $180,000 income band and would need to pay the full amount.

I think we know the answer (as much as we love LC!) of where a student will go if accepted with no aid to Harvard and no aid to Lafayette assuming he/she feels they can afford private education. That is why we have Marquis and Trustee scholarships.

Lafalum

The aid situation at Harvard (and the other Ivies) is based on income while the traditional aid formulas at Lafayttte take into account net worth which is where the resistance is coming. declinng house values, portfolios etc don't feel as safe while the college is asking to tap into those resources, But for what its worth ( not much because I have no power) here's what the college shoud do.
1. For competitive reasons the colllege should immeadiately at least copy the Lehigh plan
2. It should go one step further and enrich the merit program to make Marquis Scholarships a full ride plus increase its numbers
3. It should add the posibility of current students who do not have marquis scholarshhips to get them..
3. It should immeadiately reverse its plan to reduce the size of incoming classes and plan to increase the size of the school to 2700-2800.
4. Growth should occur in the liberal arts so it can be done without large capital expenditures.
5. The school should consider a third summer semester for those who would like to shorten their four years or add a second major.
6. Then the college should add professors paid for by the increase in population and enhanced summer sessions.
7. The college should raise money to convert its properties on the east of the hill to housing ( this may include a payoff to the city to change zoning) If that can't be done build classroom buildings and convert other buildings to housing.
8. Work with the present owners of rental housing to make sure it meets standards for students.
9. Do something useful with Fretz House, Phi Delt ( Both are now empty). Converting Frat houses to empty building or making them faculty office spaces is wasteful. These buildings could be revenue producing properties.
10. Continue Weis' academic enrichment plan now financed with a reasonable plan for population expansion and not relying on raising hundred's of millions of dollars from alumni. (doen't mean you don't try to raise money.)
11. Forget about 3rd street. Its a bad plan in a bad location. Hiring buses to take students down the hill is stupid. We have wasted 10 mio dollars on this boondoggle and the state has yet spend one cent ( remembe Ed Rendell and his giant BAD CHECK) Our future is on the top of the hill. The residents there may resist that but thats the truth.
The above accomplishes several things. Our fixed expenses are spread over a larger student pop( enhancement to the computer systems, our adminstrative expenses match our student pop), pays for Div 1 athletic programs that remains the same size, increases diversity, makes us closer to our peers and competitors and more closely matches the "ideal" of current students described in studies done early in the decade.
The problem we tend to have is that we are reactive instead of proactive.
The BOT needs an overhall and terms should be capped at 10 years!!! Maybe less.
That's my plan.

Lafalum

OH forgot to add PLEASE DO WHAT's NECSSARY TO GET OUR TRACK TEAM A TRACK!!!

wiseone

I think it was in the last 2 years because I just graduated from LC and Pres. Weiss said that the tuition and room and board fees had to increase to cover the cost of new fire systems and fire insurance or something like that. Now, to increase it another 7.3% is pretty steep. Tuition increased $8,000+ over my 4 years. I think we should try to follow Lehigh and offer more aid. Most of our Athletes, about 25% of our enrollment, relies heavily on it. Maybe we would be able to finally win some recruiting match ups. Just a thought.

nlavon · Tuition Hike

I have been reading some of these threads on the tuition hike. Usually, I lurk over on the Football boards because my son is on the team. He is a freshman lineman and was recruited heavily by Lafayette.

Honestly, I suppose football was the motivating factor in his choosing to attend but when my wife asked him if he would stay at the college if football was not in the equation, without hesitating, he said yes. He likes the school, he is doing well academically, he likes the team, has made some friends on the squad and generally, life is good. Too good actually as he and a couple of his buddies are now on Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale.

Our financial aid package from Lafayette is pretty limited to a small aid grant and a HELP loan. We are making up the rest. With another child at Northeastern University in Boston, suffice to say, we're tightening belts as I am sure most everyone else is.

I am not from Pennsylvania (I live in Maryland) and I had no ties to the school before my son chose to attend.

Perhaps like many here, my wife and make too much money to qualify for much aid. But when we send in our application for financial aid to Lafayette, we are going to ask for an increase in the small grant given us. I suppose our younger son doesn't have to attend Lafayette at all (he got into Maryland's Scholar Program which is pretty good and the in-state costs would be much cheaper), my older son can withdraw from Northeastern, we can mortgage our house, and then college will be affordable.

I realize schools have costs that have to be met but it is curious to me that these costs keep rising year after year despite the economic picture. I confess as to not knowing what Lafayette's costs were in the past, but I do know nationally that fees rise pretty much like clockwork.

I am curious to see what Lafayette is going to do because a few more of these hikes over the years would really put families like ours in a financial bind. I am not asking for sympathy but I think colleges should realize people like us are their bread and butter contributors and if we are priced out of the market, how many others like us will be priced out, too?

Well, I didn't mean to whine here but I am hoping the school realizes its tuition hike may not put the nail in the coffin but it certainly is fitting the lid and drilling the holes.

Lafalum

Well said Neal!!! I couldn't agree more. I get the feeling sometimes that the higher education establishment is like the government...they feel entitled but feel no responsibliity to run their institutions with costs in mind. That's why I wrote the piece above. We can't have a campus that has empty buildings all summer for the most part. We can't build new housing and keep empty old housing oruse it for non revenue generating purposes. We can't have bloated administration (with multiple deans ) while the school population declines.
Thanks for your input and I'll be watching your son this fall.

nlavon · Thanks for the Reply

Thanks for the kind words.

Our son and our family has come to really like Lafayette. We have been welcomed into the Lafayette family warmly and things (except for tuition) have been going well. He really likes the college and we can tell it is a great fit for him.

Hopefully, things will sort themselves out but I am glad I am not the only one who thinks along these lines!

Go Pards!

Kiltedpard

The Ivies are starting to realize that they need to give some more aid to the middle class student. Hopefully that mentality trickles down to LC. If not, then the really smart rich and really smart poor will be on the hill. If you're really smart and middle class - you're screwed and go to a state school.

TheTruth

Actually KiltedPard, the reason the Ivies started with the tuition reduction is they weren't spending the required amount of their endowment. I believe you have to spend a minimum of 5% of your endowment to continue to qualify as a non-profit.

Princeton got the ball rolling several years ago. By targeting "lower income" families, it was probably the fairest way to distribute the additional money and not offer merit scholarships (lower income as defined by Princeton's standards).

Either way, it's still a good thing they are doing by controlling costs to the families. Once Princeton did it, the other Ivies had to follow suit. Trust me, there is not an administrator at Lafayette that wishes we could do the same thing.

Nlavon: Thanks for chiming in. It's nice to hear from a current parent on this issue esp. since you are footing the bill. Glaad to hear your son is enjoying himself.

Lafalum

Actually private charities unlike private family foundations do NOT have to spend 5 % of their income which is what Congress was getting upset about, since they were also raising tuition while not spending the income from their endowment which last year for all colleges and universities was 18 pct. Lafayette's spending formula is 5% of a five year moving average I believe, of the total value of the endowment or some such formula like that.
That would indicate that in coming years the cash from the endowment will increase no matter what the market does and we raised tuition 7.3 pct anyway!!!
The issue for me is there are options to raise revenue or control costs which I enumerated above which could be done and we are not doing before raising tuition 7.3 pct. I don't believe either the BOT or the administration are doing everything they can to hold tuition down. They are either too rich to care or their kids go for free because of the tuition forgiveness agreements between schools for professors and administrators. That by the way is a tax free benefit. So if you include taxes add another 20-30 pct for the taxes you pay on the income used to save for college ( if you haven't used a 527) I guarantee you there are no people in the above catagory who are getting second mortgages on their homes to send THEIR kids to college.
There I said it.!!!

TheTruth

No arguments here.

TheTruth

This was posted on the Lafayette website this morning:

http://www.lafayette.edu/news.php/view/11885/

haven't had a chance to read the article yet but it looks like we one-upped Lehigh based on the headlines.

Lafalum

A good first step. It is esentially the same policy as Lehigh's with the exception of reducing the loan requirement for those making between 50 and 100k to 2500 vs Lehigh's 3000. It converts loans to grants. It doesn't increase the overall aid amounts as in the Ivy+ plans.
Interesting in the same article they mention their conviction to raise the faculty population while keeping student population the same. Why they had to do that in the same release is perplexing!!
Well.... cross off the first element of my plan!

nlavon · Response to Lafayette Plan

Well, that's nice to see Lafayette is doing that for "families with incomes of $100,000 or less over the next two years. " They certainly need it.

That won't help us as both my wife and I make more than that. Don't get me wrong, I am not downplaying how much this will help those families who make under 100k but two-earner couples in our neck of the woods (Washington, D.C. although I live in Maryland) are still getting caught in the middle.

I never knew it until the debates over taxes and until I put two kids through college, but I'm "rich"! Smile

I guess it's all a sense of perspective and maybe somewhere down the line, those totals might creep up a bit when they figure out additional financial aid packages.

As I said before, as the eternal optimist, I'll wait and see what Lafayette does after the financial aid application goes in. Maybe I'll be surprised.
Who knows? But it is good to see them realizing what these costs mean to families (particularly if they have more than one kid in school!)

The Maroon · Re: Response to Lafayette Plan

Lafalum

The point is an important one. The release says that Lafayette takes into account net worth and the income usually associated with it. A person living in Maryland or So California or even nothern New Jersey is stitting on a house worth 500k or even 1 mio dollars and to live in those areas cost far more than to live in Buffalo or even central Pa. Should we be considering that net worth, should we be forcing families to borrow against their homes to go to school???? It gets back to my point of value , entitlement and perspective. Lafayette is not alone, its an attitude present with administrations and faculties insulated from real life. 200,000 dollars is a huge amount of money and multiply that times several children.
To charge that without consideration to other methods of raising revenue or cutting costs is an act of hubris.
We matched the efforts of a close competitor...fine... but it is still not enough. We have to consider our cost on its own merit not in response to someone else. For a group that doesn't face that expense in their lifetime in same way most people do, anything less than 100 pct attention to it is offensive.
Before they go to the well of alumni support those questions have to be ansewered. Can you justify a virtually empty physical plant during the summer? Is reducing academic requirements ( 4 courses per semester vs 5 per semester) an act of valule? Is raising tuition 7.3 pct ...4 pct higher than the rate of inflation justified? Where is the income from a portfoliio that has grown 300 mio dollars in five years and what has it been spent on?? Is reducing the faculty to student ratio one point an educational enrichment act or something else? Can we justify empty or unused classrooms and housing units( frat houses), while asking alumni to donate more and parents to pay more??
Yes a first step...... just a first step.

nlavon · Reply to Maroon

"I see your son went to Blair. They were HORRID in football when I was young..but your son was born the week I matriculated at Lafayette--so obviously time has gone by. I know Blair is in a completely different place now for one thing."

Blair High School moved from Wayne Avenue by Sligo Creek Park in Silver Spring to the Four Corners Area (sorry if this is not making sense to those not familiar with this area so please feel free to skip over) about eight years ago. The school has close to 4,000 students and is huge but still overcrowded as the student population continues to grow.

The football team, to put it mildly, has its problems. The best year they had when my son played there was 6-4. I think last year, they didn't win a game. With a student body like that, you would figure they would get lots of good athletes, but they don't. Or if they do, they aren't coached properly.

I always felt Scott didn't get the proper coaching for football at Blair but he wanted to attend there. My oldest son went to Good Counsel H.S. in Wheaton. If Scott had gone to GC, he would have received incredible coaching, but he didn't want to go, and football was not in the picture at that point.

But things work out and he is very happy at Lafayette. His senior year, I think they went 2-8. He played both offense and defense and was exhausted by the middle of the third quarter. Some of the players thought they were a lot better than they were, they fumbled constantly, made mental mistakes, and generally were just outclassed. There are fewer and fewer kids going out for football because of its losing ways. They don't get much student support.

The soccer team at Blair is much better given the high percentage of Latino students in the area.

But as I said, he liked Blair, played on its teams (football, ice hockey and lacrosse) and moved on. He really likes Lafayette and says even if football were not in the picture, he would stay there. So he's happy and found the right fit. The football is an added bonus.

As I've also said, we've been welcomed into the Lafayette family and felt so going up for several of the games. Hope to run into some of you up there in the fall.

College to raise tuition 7.3pct

Tuition Hike

Thanks for the Reply

Response to Lafayette Plan

Re: Response to Lafayette Plan

Reply to Maroon