Date: 9/8/2010
Dear Reader:
Why does college have to cost so much? Our political class took up this war cry quite a while ago, and we’ve documented that many families with the means to pay for college have simply voted with their feet by choosing to capture the subsidy available at public universities.
Setting aside the certainty that a private college wouldn’t seem quite so expensive if there wasn’t a subsidized alternative, in the current environment families are more value and price sensitive than ever and—it seems to us from our focus group work on the subject—more troubled and resentful.
Cost containment is a more frequent theme in the popular press, in the higher education journals, and in public policy discussions. Recently, the University of California Berkeley announced an initiative to explore on-line delivery of most undergraduate courses and programs.
So, what’s the current thinking at private liberal arts colleges—where teaching and learning is the focus and a superlative student experience is a brand promise defined in personalized terms?
During Summer Seminar, June 10-11, I asked Michael Kyle, Vice President and Dean of Enrollment at St. Olaf, to sit down with four of his colleagues to discuss cost containment
Michael is higher education’s Charlie Rose, but without the self-importance. The discussion was wide-ranging, but what’s clear is that containing costs is only one piece of the cost-containment discussion.
Communicating with families came up again and again—communicating net cost vs. sticker price. Communicating value. Gently telling parents that, for example, “this is not college as you experienced it. You can’t smoke in the classroom, and that’s for the good of the students as well as the very expensive digital technology.”
We’ve divided this video conversation into three parts, each of which is around 10 minutes long.
Michael talks with Ray Brown, Dean of Admission at Texas Christian; Brett Schraeder, Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management at Occidental; Tom Willoughby, Vice Chancellor for Enrollment at University of Denver; and Madeleine Rhyneer, Vice President for Admission, Marketing & Financial Aid and Chief Marketing Officer at Willamette.
I think you’ll find their discussion entertaining as well as informative. And please let me know if this prompts ideas for other such discussions you’d like to hear on this or other topics.
Best regards,
Jim
