Universities across U.S. lowering tuition for fall semester

When Franciscan University of Steubenville announced it would cover tuition for new students this fall, incoming freshman Alan Wood was thrilled.

“This is a huge financial burden taken off my family,” Alan, a senior at Kenston High School in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, said Wednesday. “This is just great that I can go to college in the fall and not have to worry financially.”

The Catholic university in Ohio is not the only school waiving tuition fees for the fall semester. Southern New Hampshire University, one of the nation’s largest private schools, announced Tuesday it would “accelerate” a 61% reduction of its annual tuition, cutting it to $10,000.

Citing the coronavirus, the school also said it will pay a full year of tuition for first-time freshman living on campus but taking online courses beginning this fall.

“We knew that a traditional college education was increasingly out of reach for a majority of Americans before the COVID-19 pandemic hit,” university President and CEO Paul LeBlanc said Tuesday.

Late last week, University of Nebraska-Lincoln President Ted Carter announced a new scholarship to cover tuition for in-state residents whose families make less than $60,000 a year.

“We understand that in these uncertain times, many Nebraskans are rethinking every dollar,” Mr. Carter said.

With unemployment figures climbing weekly, education observers anticipate a repeat of the 2008 Great Recession, when out-of-work adults flooded two-year and for-profit colleges. Between 2007 and 2010, community college enrollment soared from 15.6 million to more than 18 million students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

But with schools closed this spring because of the coronavirus, the crush of the fall semester might not resemble the last time around.

“Ordinary economics will tell you that there will be something similar,” said Jay Schalin, director of policy analysis at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. “There is [also] a possibility that a lot of people will be pulling back from college altogether. There’s just a lot of variables swirling around right now.”

Last month, Moody’s Investor Service downgraded the higher-education sector’s outlook from stable to negative, noting given the high amounts of debt some public and private colleges are carrying, low enrollment could imperil some higher-learning institutions.

Schools with deep pockets — such as Harvard University, with its $40 billion endowment — will weather any storm, the ratings service said. But for schools whose economic livelihoods are tethered more heavily to enrollment, this fall’s enrollment is more crucial than ever.

“All of us have reason to be concerned, and small private colleges have more reason to be concerned,” Jonathan Gibralter, president of Wells College in Aurora, New York, told the Utica Observer-Dispatch earlier this month.

Large public institutions such as Michigan State University and Oregon State University have announced a tuition freeze.

At the University of Minnesota, administrators reportedly are seeing a freshman class of 500 fewer students for this fall. Regent Michael Hsu has announced a tuition freeze at university system’s five campuses for the 2020-2021 academic year, saying “We have to be full because if we’re not, we leave a hole for many years to come.”

At Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, deposit fees have been cut in half, saving prospective residential students up to $200. Davidson College, in Davidson, North Carolina, will defer tuition bills for this fall until July 2021.

And Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey, a school catering to working adults, has slashed tuition by $145 per credit hour for in-state residents for spring and summer terms.

“We don’t want students to lose their higher education momentum during this crisis,” university President Merodie A. Hancock said in a statement. “This is not the time to charge our visiting students any more than our degree-seeking, enrolled students pay.”