University of the Sciences lowers tuition by 37%

University of the Sciences announced a plan to roll back its tuition sticker price by 37 percent next year in a bid to appeal to a wider swath of applicants.

Freshmen in fall 2018 will pay tuition and fees of $25,000, down from $39,994 this year. As with other tuition resets, the university also will reduce aid it gives to students, meaning few will actually save anywhere near $15,000.

The aim, said Patricia Vanston, vice president for business development and enrollment management, is to become more transparent about what college actually costs, with an eye towards attracting a broader base of students.

“What we’re really trying to get out there is what a wonderful opportunity this school provides,” Vanston said. “We think people are not even getting to know that because of the sticker price.”

The West Philadelphia university becomes the fourth college in the region to “reset tuition,” as colleges locally and nationally struggle to compete for fewer high school graduates.

USciences hopes to attract similar interest. In addition to resetting tuition for next year’s freshmen, the university also announced that it would freeze tuition and fees for those students at $25,000 for all four years, for a total of $100,000.

Pharmacy and occupational and physical therapy students, whose doctoral degrees take six years, will be locked in at a total of $190,000, she said. Students in these programs will save a minimum of $30,000 over six years, Vanston said.

While current undergraduates will not be reset, their costs will be frozen at this year’s rate.

Room and board rates are not part of the reset and could rise. Students will pay about $15,600 this year.

The school, Vanston said, had been raising tuition 3.5 percent to 4 percent a year, “a point of dissatisfaction” for students.

Vanston said she reached out to officials at other schools that have reset their tuition. “One question I asked all of them is would you do it again, and they all said yes,” she said.

More than two dozen colleges have reset tuition in recent decades with various degrees of success. Lucie Lapovsky, a former college president-turned-consultant, two years ago completed a study on eight colleges that rolled back tuition. Seven saw increases in freshman enrollment the first year, and of the four that made the change several years ago, all had maintained the increase, she found. Five had an increase in tuition revenue as a result of greater enrollment.

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