Tag: Tuition

  • DOJ Sues California Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    DOJ Sues California Over In-State Tuition for Noncitizens

    The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state of California on Thursday, challenging a state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates. The lawsuit also targets the California Dream Act, which offers state financial aid to undocumented students who meet certain requirements.

    The complaint, filed in the Eastern District of California, targets the state, Governor Gavin Newsom, state attorney general Rob Bonta, the University of California Board of Regents, the California State University Board of Trustees and the California Community Colleges’ Board of Governors.

    “California is illegally discriminating against American students and families by offering exclusive tuition benefits for non-citizens,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

    California marks the sixth state the federal government has sued over such policies, but unlike some of the others, California plans to fight back. The state is home to more than 102,000 undocumented students, who have been permitted to pay in-state tuition rates since 2001 if they met certain requirements. Undocumented students have also been allowed to access state financial aid for more than a decade, according to the Higher Education Immigration Portal.

    Newsom has repeatedly pushed back on the Trump administration’s policies, including immigration crackdowns. The DOJ filed another lawsuit against the state on Monday, after Newsom signed a bill banning face coverings for federal immigration agents. The DOJ also recently sued Newsom and California Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the state’s redistricting plan.

    Bondi said in her statement that the DOJ will “continue bringing litigation against California until the state ceases its flagrant disregard for federal law.”

    But Newsom isn’t backing down.

    “The DOJ has now filed three meritless, politically motivated lawsuits against California in a single week,” Marissa Saldivar, a spokesperson for the governor’s office, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “Good luck, Trump. We’ll see you in court.”

    By contrast, Texas and Oklahoma, faced with similar lawsuits this summer, swiftly sided with the DOJ, quashing in-state tuition benefits for their undocumented students. The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education also agreed to stop offering in-state tuition to noncitizens in September, a few months after the DOJ sued, but the legal battle is ongoing. A judge recently allowed a group of Kentucky undocumented students, represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to intervene in the case. Legal fights in Minnesota and Illinois have also continued as the states defend their in-state tuition policies against DOJ challenges.

    The government argues that such laws violate a federal statutory provision that says undocumented people can’t receive higher ed benefits unless citizens are also eligible. The DOJ has asserted that states can’t permit undocumented students in a state to pay lower tuition rates while denying out-of-state citizens the same benefit. Proponents of California’s current policy argue it allows any nonresident who meets certain requirements—including spending three years in a California high school—to access in-state tuition, not just undocumented students.

    Rachel Zaentz, a spokesperson for the University of California system, said system leaders believe they’ve acted within the law.

    “For decades, the University of California has followed applicable state and federal laws regarding eligibility for in-state tuition, financial aid, and scholarships,” Zaentz said in a statement sent to Inside Higher Ed. “While we will, of course, comply with the law as determined by the courts, we believe our policies and practices are consistent with current legal standards.”

    California Community Colleges Chancellor Sonya Christian said in a similar memo that the system “will follow all legal obligations and fully participate in the judicial process alongside our state partners” but “statutes referenced in the lawsuit have been in place for many years and have been implemented in accordance with long-standing legal guidance.”

    “Although we cannot comment on ongoing litigation, our commitment remains unchanged: we will continue to ensure that all students who qualify under state law have access to an affordable, high-quality education,” Christian said. “We will also continue to comply fully with all current federal and state requirements.”

    Iliana Perez, executive director of the advocacy organization Immigrants Rising, called the latest lawsuit an “an affront to the decades of hard-fought student-led advocacy for equitable access to postsecondary education.” She also noted the challenge comes just a week before college applications are due at public four-year institutions in the state.

    “This challenge is a callous attempt to have students second-guess their dreams,” Perez said in a statement. “We have one message for this Administration; we will not be deterred!”

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  • DOJ sues California over in-state tuition for undocumented students

    DOJ sues California over in-state tuition for undocumented students

    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Justice is suing California over its laws allowing certain undocumented college students to pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges and receive state-administered scholarships.
    • In a Thursday court filing, the agency argued that in-state tuition rates for undocumented students illegally provide benefits not offered to all U.S. citizens and asked a federal judge to rule California’s laws unconstitutional.
    • The lawsuit, which also names as defendants Gov. Gavin Newsom and the governing boards of California’s three public college systems, marks the sixth the DOJ has brought against states with in-state tuition policies for certain undocumented students.

    Dive Insight:

    California is home to roughly 103,000 undocumented residents enrolled in higher education — accounting for about a fifth of some 510,000 undocumented students in the U.S. — according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal.

    Since 2001, a California law known as AB 540 has allowed students to pay in-state tuition at its three public higher ed systems if they attended a state high school for at least three years and earned their high school diploma or equivalent in California. Undocumented students must also sign an affidavit saying they have either filed an application to gain legal status or plan to once they are eligible.

    A 2017 law broadened that eligibility and permits students to reach the three-year attendance threshold by combining any time spent at a California high school, community college, adult school or carceral education program.

    It also allows students who completed at least three years full-time high school coursework anywhere to qualify for the waiver if they attended at least three years of their K-12 education in California.

    Leaders from the state’s public college systems — the University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges — supported the expansion of the in-state tuition policy.

    Both laws apply to both U.S. citizens and immigrants without legal status.

    But U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Thursday statement that policies are “illegally discriminating against American students and families” and that California is demonstrating “flagrant disregard for federal law.”

    Since 1998, U.S. law has prohibited immigrants without legal status from receiving any higher education benefit based on their residency, “unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit … without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

    The agency’s lawsuit is not the first time California’s in-state tuition law has faced legal opposition. One challenge to AB 540 that similarly argued the policy violated federal law made it to the California Supreme Court in 2010.

    However, the court upheld AB 540, ruling it did not violate federal law because students seeking in-state tuition status did not need to be California residents.

    The DOJ argued Thursday that this decision was incorrect and that federal courts should reject it. 

    “Allocating lower tuition rates on the basis of high school attendance is a proxy for residence,” running afoul of federal law, the agency said.

    Using the same argument, the DOJ lawsuit also targets a 2011 law permitting AB 540-eligible undocumented students to receive state-administered scholarships and aid and a law passed in 2014 establishing a student loan program for them.

    Gaining an in-state tuition waiver for California can have big cost implications for prospective students, as the state’s public colleges charge some of the highest out-of-state tuition premiums in the U.S., according to the College Board.

    The University of California published tuition and fees for out-of-state students who started in 2025-26 were $37,602 more a year than for their in-state counterparts.

    At the University of California, Berkeley, that means out-of-state, full-time undergraduates who first enrolled this fall would pay $55,080 if they did not receive financial aid or scholarships — more than double the $17,478 their in-state counterparts would pay sans aid.

    Even with aid and institutional scholarships, out-of-state students saw a stark difference. U.S. News & World Report estimated that the average total cost of attendance at UC Berkeley for those receiving need-based aid was $16,636 for in-state students and $66,625 for those from outside of California.

    The Cal State system’s published tuition and fees for out-of-state are also higher than for in-state students. Its 23 campuses charge a base rate of $6,450 for in-state undergraduate tuition and fees for the 2025-26 academic year. This year, out-of-state students pay at least $444 more per credit.

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  • Advocates Defend In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students

    Advocates Defend In-State Tuition for Undocumented Students

    Immigrant students and their advocates are working to reopen federal lawsuits that ended in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students in two states and another state where the same outcome seems imminent. Advocates say the judges ruled in favor of the government without a public hearing and the affected students weren’t given the opportunity to defend the policies.

    Since the summer, the U.S. Department of Justice challenged in-state tuition policies in Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Texas, claiming state laws extending in-state tuition prices to undocumented students breach federal law.

    In Texas and Oklahoma, attorneys general quickly sided with the DOJ and judges swiftly ruled to end in-state tuition benefits for undocumented students. As a result, tuition tripled for some undocumented students this fall, forcing them to make difficult choices about whether they could afford to stay enrolled.

    Kentucky’s undocumented students could soon face the same dilemma. The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education agreed to end in-state tuition benefits for local undocumented students in a settlement filed in September, but a judge has yet to make a ruling. Meanwhile, legal battles in Minnesota and Illinois are ongoing as these states defend their policies.

    Since these lawsuits first emerged, civil rights groups and students have sought to intervene or become parties to them. They’re hoping to reopen the quickly closed cases to have their say in court.

    A Latino civil rights organization, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, was the first to file a motion to intervene on behalf of undocumented students in Texas in June. A month later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Democracy Forward and the National Immigration Law Center followed suit. They filed their own emergency motions to intervene on behalf of the activist group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, the Austin Community College District’s Board of Trustees and Oscar Silva, a student at the University of North Texas.

    MALDEF filed a similar motion on behalf of a group of undocumented students in Kentucky in August. And last week, the organization moved to intervene for students in Oklahoma, as well.

    Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, said undocumented students in Kentucky, Oklahoma and Texas “were promised regular tuition, and as a result of that promise, made the decision to attend public higher education institutions in those states,” but “that promise was stripped away wrongfully” and without public input.

    He stressed that, except for in extreme circumstances, such as cases involving national security, federal courts are meant to do their work in the public eye. But the Texas and Oklahoma laws got the ax without a public hearing. He also argued state lawmakers who dislike these policies can seek to repeal them, like any other state law, but there’s “no basis for legally challenging them.”

    “They’re not allowed to close the public out, do things behind closed doors,” Saenz said. “We ought to expect our courts to conduct their work in public. And that did not happen in Texas. It did not happen in Oklahoma.”

    A Bumpy Road

    Despite students and advocates’ efforts, the motions to intervene have hit a legal setback.

    In Texas, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied both MALDEF’s and the other groups’ motions to intervene. O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, said in court filings he agreed with the federal government and Texas that the motions were “legally futile” because federal law “pre-empts” the challenged Texas law. All of the groups seeking to intervene appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

    Saenz pushed back on the judge’s reasoning, saying O’Connor agreed with Texas and the DOJ’s conclusion “without any argument” or a public hearing where he could have heard a defense of the Texas Dream Act, the 24-year-old law that offered in-state tuition to undocumented students.

    “No administration of either party in nearly a quarter century has ever challenged the Texas Dream Act, so his conclusion of futility is simply ludicrous,” Saenz said.

    The law was never “presented,” according to Saenz. “That’s the way the courts are supposed to work. You’re supposed to have [an] argument presented in an adversarial manner. He simply signed off on a concocted agreement” between the Texas and U.S. attorneys general, he said.

    A group of higher ed institutions and organizations have rallied behind MALDEF and other advocacy groups. The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration filed a 43-page amicus brief with the Fifth Circuit last week, defending interveners in Texas. Thirty-seven colleges, universities, higher education and immigrant rights organizations also signed on to the amicus brief, including the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities.

    The district court decision “violates democratic principles by denying all interested parties their right to be heard,” the amicus brief read.

    Whether or not intervention efforts succeed, the stakes of these overturned state laws are too high not to try everything possible, said Miriam Feldblum, president and CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance.

    “This is about workforce development and supporting our domestic—including immigrant—talent pipeline that colleges and universities train, educate, nurture, and that go on to fuel the workforces … in communities and states,” she said.

    She also described intervening as a matter of “fairness.”

    “This is not about special treatment of undocumented students,” Feldblum said. “The tuition-equity challenges are targeting students who have grown up in the U.S., who have graduated from local high schools to pursue postsecondary education. This is what we want them to do. This is why we’re investing in their education.”

    Despite the roadblock, Saenz said he’s still confident motions to intervene will ultimately triumph.

    “I’m very hopeful, because it’s the law,” he said. “Intervention is legally required to be granted in all of these cases. And when we get to the merits of whether the tuition-equity laws are pre-empted or not, the law is absolutely on our side.”

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  • The Hidden Costs of College Beyond Tuition

    The Hidden Costs of College Beyond Tuition

    College affordability conversations tend to focus on tuition. But it’s the total cost of attendance (COA) that can catch many students off guard and derail their progress toward a degree. A new deep dive report from Inside Higher Ed—“Beyond Tuition: The Hidden Costs of College and Their Disproportionate Impact”—reveals how inaccurate COA disclosures and unexpected costs, from mandatory meal plans to technology fees to rising rents, can blindside students and threaten their success.

    Join the Discussion

    On Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 2 p.m. Eastern, Inside Higher Ed will host a live webcast discussion based on the report. Register for that here. Download “Beyond Tuition: The Hidden Costs of College and Their Disproportionate Impact” here.

    Drawing on data from Inside Higher Ed’s Student Voice surveys and other research, plus interviews with dozens of experts, student advocates and students themselves, the report notes that just 27 percent of undergraduates fully understand their institution’s cost of attendance—and that, for some, even an unexpected $100 expense could threaten their enrollment. Hidden costs hit lower-income, first-generation, parenting, international and other student groups especially hard, the report also finds.

    Examining efforts to improve COA accuracy and transparency, and zooming in on students and change-makers in California, New York and Texas, the report calls for colleges to provide more accurate COA data, expanded emergency aid and clearer communication to help students plan for the full cost of college, not just the tuition bill.

    “The public doesn’t think about living costs, although you have to cover them when you go to school. They also think tuition is skyrocketing when it really hasn’t,” said Robert Kelchen, professor and department head of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. “To some extent we’re focused on the wrong problem.”

    This independent editorial report is written by Melissa Ezarik, with support from the Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained in the report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Gates Foundation.

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  • Net tuition rises at colleges, but costs are far below their peaks

    Net tuition rises at colleges, but costs are far below their peaks

    Dive Brief:

    • The average tuition and fees paid by students and their families after aid rose slightly for the 2025-26 academic year but remain well below historic peaks, according to the latest higher education pricing study from the College Board. 
    • At public four-year colleges, net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time students increased just 1.3% to $2,300 from last year, when adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board’s estimates. That figure is down 48.3% from the peak in 2012-2013. 
    • At private nonprofits, net tuition and fees for first-time, full-time students rose 3.7% annually to $16,910 in the 2025-26 year, when adjusted for inflation. By comparison, that’s down 14.6% from the peak for private colleges in 2006-07.

    Dive Insight:

    Despite widespread debate over the cost of college, in real terms those costs have largely decreased for students over the past two decades. Grants from both public and institutional sources can defray those costs and often significantly reduce college sticker prices. 

    In 2024-25, grant aid rose an inflation-adjusted 5.4% to $173.7 billion, according to the College Board. Much of that increase comes from a 19% spike in Pell Grant aid, which went to nearly 1 million more students during the 2024-25 year. Enrollment in the program rebounded and eligibility expanded under the FAFSA Simplification Act. 

    Last year’s 7.3 million Pell recipients still fell well below the program’s height of 9.3 million in 2010-11. Total government spending on Pell, at $38.6 billion in 2024-25, was down about one-fourth from its peak in 2010-11 after inflation. 

    Institutional aid plays a significant role in reducing sticker prices as well, and increasingly so as colleges wrestle with enrollment pressures and competition. Grant aid from colleges made up 33% of the $205.2 billion in total student aid, which includes federal loans, for undergraduates in 2024-25. That’s compared to 23% a decade earlier, according to the College Board study. 

    That has reduced the burden for students. Average student debt for bachelor’s degree recipients in 2023-24 was $29,560, about $6,000 less than it was 10 years prior, according to the report.

    While sticker prices have been rising, adjusting for inflation tempers the price growth. Before inflation, tuition and fees for residents rose 2.9% at four-year public colleges in 2025-26, while sticker prices rose 4% at private nonprofits. After factoring in inflation, those sticker price increases were 1% and 1.4%, respectively. 

    Still, the public often focuses on sticker price, and tuition discounting often muddies the college cost picture. Although tuition discounting often helps colleges recruit students, some experts say high sticker prices can scare off those not attuned to the complexities of college pricing and can distort the public conversation around cost. 

    The College Board also found that college enrollment has rebounded from a pandemic-era dip. Fall enrollment hit 18.9 million students in 2023, up from 18.5 million in 2022 and 18.6 million in 2021. However, that figure is down 9.6% from peak enrollment in 2011. 

    Enrollment pressures are likely to increase amid projected declines in high school graduates in the coming years.

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  • U Austin Announces $100M Gift, End to Tuition “Forever”

    U Austin Announces $100M Gift, End to Tuition “Forever”

    The University of Austin announced Wednesday that Republican megadonor Jeff Yass is donating $100 million, it’s “ending tuition forever” and it will also “never take government money.” At the same time, it said Yass’s gift represents the first third of “a $300 million campaign to build a university that sets students free.”

    University president Carlos Carvalho told Inside Higher Ed he doesn’t plan for this $300 million to become an endowment meant to last forever. Instead, he said it will be invested but spent down as a “bridge” until the institution produces enough donating alumni to keep tuition free. He estimated this will take 25 years, “give or take.”

    “We understand there’s risk in this approach,” Carvalho said. But he said he believes in the product, calling his students his “equity partners”—but stressed that “all they owe is their greatness.”

    When the institution welcomed its first class of students last fall, it said annual tuition was $32,000, but Carvalho said nobody has ever paid tuition. The university still hasn’t earned accreditation, which can take years, but the state of Texas allowed it to grant degrees and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, an accrediting body, has granted it candidate status on its path to recognition. The university says it expects to complete “the first accreditation cycle” between 2028 and 2031.

    Yass—a billionaire co-founder of financial trading firm Susquehanna International Group and a significant investor in TikTok owner ByteDance—was very recently in the news for other gifts. He had backed Republicans in a bid to end the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Democratic majority, but voters reappointed all three justices up for re-election to another decade on the bench (though one is required to retire in a few years). He’s also provided millions in support of private K–12 school vouchers and electing Republicans to Congress.

    He told The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news of the University of Austin gift, that he’s been impressed by the university, wants to eliminate stress for parents and supports separation between education and government. His donation to the fledgling institution—which Carvalho said is atop Yass’s previous $36 million gift—is another example of its continued support from prominent conservatives. Carvalho said the university has raised more than $300 million, including the $100 million going toward the new $300 million campaign. The Journal reported that real estate developer Harlan Crow, who controversially funded trips for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and Peter Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir and friend to Vice President JD Vance, have been among the donors.

    Such donations may enable the university to do what other universities can’t: rely neither on student, nor state, nor federal contributions to survive. Instead, the university says it’s banking on alumni sustaining it. The first group of students is slated to graduate in 2028.

    “Our bet: Create graduates so exceptional they’ll pay it forward when they succeed, financing the tuition of the next generation,” the university said in its announcement. “When our students build important companies, defend our nation, advance scientific frontiers, build families, and create works that elicit awe, they’ll remember who made their excellence possible. And they’ll give back.”

    It went on to say that “other Americans will take notice” and invest. “Every other college gets paid whether students succeed or fail. At UATX, if our graduates don’t become essential to American excellence—and if their work doesn’t inspire others to fund this mission—we’re done.”

    Some higher ed observers are skeptical. Mark DeFusco, a principal at Prometheus Education, which performs mergers and acquisitions for troubled colleges, said running a “serious college … a college as we know it” on just a $300 million fund would be “nearly impossible.”

    “If they can pull it off, God bless ’em,” DeFusco said. “While I really understand their urge, the practicality doesn’t seem like it’s possible, and I’d like to see the details.”

    Carvalho said the university currently has 150 students in its freshman and sophomore classes, and he plans to grow total enrollment to 400 to 500 for now. “We need this first phase of growth to be small,” he said.

    “We talk about building the Navy SEALs of the mind,” he said. “The Navy SEALs are not a class of thousands and thousands.”

    He said the university offers courses in, among other things, computer science, journalism and prelaw, and wants to launch programs in all three areas. One of the university’s founders is Bari Weiss, who also founded The Free Press and recently became editor in chief of CBS News.

    Other universities have also tried to jettison tuition in favor of alumni support. In 2021, Hope College in Michigan aimed to raise $1 billion for its endowment in order to go tuition-free. As part of that plan, students would commit to donate to the college after graduation. The first cohort graduated this past spring, and 126 students have participated over the first four years, according to an annual report from the college. Roughly 85 percent of the graduating seniors and 70 percent of freshmen through juniors have donated.

    Neal Hutchens, a university research professor and faculty member in the University of Kentucky’s College of Education, said the no-tuition, no-government-funding plan raises questions about how large UATX could grow and whether its model could be replicated elsewhere.

    He also noted that the university’s marketing of itself as against the grain of academe isn’t unique. A video on UATX’s homepage critiques “coddling,” “virtue signaling” and the “disastrous” state of higher ed “in the Western world,” complete with images of a building with a rainbow-colored sign above an entrance, people wearing cloth masks while blowing into instruments and pro-Palestine protesters being arrested. In the video, Weiss says to understand why “the museums you love, and the publishing houses you love, and the newspapers you used to trust” are “hollowed out, you have to look at the nucleation point for this—and that is the university.”

    Hutchens said New College of Florida, a public institution taken over by Gov. Ron DeSantis’s conservative board appointees, appears to be charting “a similar iconoclastic path.” He noted New College took a public stand early against what some call wokeness.

    “That’s not necessarily been an easy fix for New College to just automatically thrive,” he said. He said he’s curious if such institutions are going after the same donors, and they may eventually be competing more with one another than the institutions they’re setting themselves apart from.

    However, Hutchens said, UATX might be able to gain currency in the tech industry and make further inroads with people with deep pockets.

    “It doesn’t take too many $100 million gifts to add up to a pretty good endowment,” he said.

    Asked about assertions that his university pushes conservative ideology, Carvalho said, “We have a core curriculum that is teaching the best that has been done and has been seen in the Western tradition,” from philosophy to science, literature and more. He said none of those things are conservative.

    “We do have an institution that’s very patriotic,” he said, adding that if that’s a “conservative statement these days—again, not my choice.”

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  • Coppin State’s Tuition Program Led to Enrollment Boom

    Coppin State’s Tuition Program Led to Enrollment Boom

    A historically Black university in Maryland says efforts to boost enrollment and up its name recognition are paying dividends, allowing it to more than quadruple out-of-state student enrollment over the past two years.

    Coppin State University in Baltimore announced in 2023 that it would begin offering in-state tuition to any student who lived in one of the 41 U.S. states and territories without an HBCU—as well as the District of Columbia, which has two HBCUs—through a program called Expand Eagle Nation. In 2024, the first year of the program, the institution more than doubled the number of students from qualifying states to 195—up from 81 the previous fall. (Coppin’s in-state annual cost of attendance is $27,410, versus $34,474 for out-of-state students.)

    This fall, the numbers increased even more dramatically: 416 of Coppin’s incoming class of 1,000—its largest freshman class in 25 years—come from the qualifying states. Overall, Coppin’s enrollment is up 26 percent this year, including growth on the in-state side, as well. In fact, James Stewart, associate vice president for student development and achievement, said the attention Coppin has received for its Expand Eagle Nation program has raised the university’s profile among local students.

    Still, it’s been a major shift for the institution, which used to attract students primarily from within a 50-mile radius.

    “I think our students enjoy the diversity of thought from so many different regions,” said Jinawa McNeil, the university’s director of admissions. “This is really giving opportunity to students, but it’s [also] making Coppin a different environment, where you traditionally were with students that you might have went to high school with, or maybe a high school not far from you, but now you’re talking to students who are literally from states that you’ve never been to.”

    Coppin’s growth comes at a time when many institutions across the country are working to attract new populations of students ahead of the impending demographic cliff—the decline in high school graduates that is expected to begin next year. (The Maryland Higher Education Commission projected earlier this year, however, that Maryland will be one of the few states to buck the trend, projecting an 11 percent increase in high school graduates from 2024 to 2031.)

    Coppin isn’t the only institution looking to out-of-state students to boost enrollment; in an interview earlier this fall, University of Connecticut officials attributed their growth in head count to more out-of-state name recognition due to the institution’s academic programs and popular sports teams, for example.

    “Given the declining number of students in their own state, [colleges] have to chase them elsewhere,” said Gregory Price, a professor of economics at the University of New Orleans who studies the economics of HBCUs. “It’s sort of like an arms race.”

    Coppin is also capitalizing on the current popularity of HBCUs, which saw significant increases in applications and enrollments following the Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on affirmative action in admissions.

    “Everything that’s been going on politically, from affirmative action to DEI, sends a message to Black students that they don’t belong,” Henry Williams, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for public HBCUs, told Inside Higher Ed regarding the trend last year. “At an HBCU, you’re never going to have that question, and all of the support, resources and scholarship money being taken away elsewhere are already built into the structure [at HBCUs] … there’s value in a sense of belonging.”

    Price noted that HBCUs are also often cheaper than other institutions—as is the case at Coppin, which says it’s the least expensive institution in Maryland. That’s because historically, HBCUs haven’t had large research enterprises, which saves the institutions many costs, he said; they can also attract faculty without paying salaries above market rate.

    “To the extent HBCUs have a distinct value proposition for Black students, that could be good because there aren’t many HBCUs … and that value proposition is high returns in the labor market relative to the cost of attendance,” he said. “If you can reduce the costs, you could probably stay ahead of that demographic cliff longer than other colleges can.”

    Bolstering Recruitment

    Along with offering in-state tuition to out-of-state students, Coppin officials took a slew of steps to increase their presence in the states from which they hoped to attract students. That included visiting high schools—and plastering advertisements on buses and billboards in those cities ahead of their visits, so students would hopefully already recognize the Coppin brand by the time they met an admissions official.

    The university formed transfer partnerships with community college systems in Colorado and California, and the admissions team reached out to regional organizations that help students in the college search process to ensure their staffs were aware of Coppin.

    Increasing the university’s name recognition was an important goal of the Expand Eagle Nation program, McNeil said.

    “It [used to be] a much harder recruitment sale, for lack of a better term,” she said. “We were beginning with who were as an institution, rather than saying, ‘Oh, you’ve heard about us, so let’s help you learn more.’”

    Stewart also noted that the university was prepared for the enrollment boost, having met with academic affairs staff over the past year to ensure there would be enough courses and faculty to meet the needs of all students. To house the influx, Coppin is currently constructing a new dorm, slated to open next fall; it also has six off-campus apartment facilities that Stewart said include resident assistants, just like on-campus housing, and regular shuttle access to campus.

    “We’re going to end up with a good mix where we increase our housing on campus, especially, to meet our new students, but we have options for our [upperclassmen] off campus that give them this blending of what real-life living in an urban environment is,” he said.

    One unexpected challenge that has come with implementing Expand Eagle Nation? Convincing prospective students that the offer is real.

    “They [don’t] believe it,” McNeil said. “Like, ‘What’s the trick, what’s the catch?’ They just don’t believe an institution was willing to invest that deeply, because students understand, and definitely parents of students, specifically parents that have been to college and might have some college debt. They just did not believe that this was an opportunity, because they don’t see too many opportunities like this.”

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  • That Was The Quarter That Was, Summer 2025

    That Was The Quarter That Was, Summer 2025

    Welcome to TWTQTW for June-September. Things were a little slow in July, but with back to school happening in most of the Northern Hemisphere sometime between last August and late September, the stories began pouring in. 

    You might think that “back to school” would deliver up lots of stories about enrolment trends, but you’d mostly be wrong. While few countries are as bad as Canada when it comes to up-to date enrolment data, it’s a rare country that can give you good enrolment information in September. What you tend to get are what I call “mood” pieces looking backwards and forwards on long-term trends: this is particularly true in places like South Korea, where short-term trends are not bad (international students are backfilling domestic losses nicely for the moment) but the long-term looks pretty awful. Taiwan, whose demographic crisis is well known, saw a decline of about 7% in new enrolments, but there were also some shock declines in various parts of the world: Portugal, Denmark, and – most surprisingly – Pakistan. 

    Another perennial back-to-school story has to do with tuition fees. Lots of stories here. Ghana announced a new “No Fees Stress” policy in which first-year students could get their fees refunded. No doubt it’s a policy which students will enjoy, but this policy seems awfully close in inspiration to New Zealand’s First Year Free policy which famously had no effect whatsoever on access. But, elsewhere, tuition policy seems to be moving in the other direction. In China, rising fees at top universities sparked fears of an access gap and, in Iran, the decision of Islamic Azad University (a sort-of private institution that educates about a quarter of all Iranian youth) to continue raising tuition (partly in response to annual inflation rates now over 40%) has led to widespread dissatisfaction. Finally, tuition rose sharply in Bulgaria after the Higher Education Act was amended to link fees to government spending (i.e. more government spending, more fees). After student protests, the government moved to cut tuition by 25% from its new level, but this still left tuition substantially above where it was the year before.

    On the related issue of Student Aid, three countries stood out. The first was Kazakhstan, where the government increased domestic student grants increased by 61% but also announced a cut in the government’s famous study-abroad scheme which sends high-potential youth to highly-ranked foreign universities. 

    Perhaps the most stunning change occurred in Chile, where two existing student aid programs were replaced by a new system called the Fondo para la Educación Superior (FES), which is arguably unique in the world. The idea is to replace the existing system of student loans with a graduate tax: students who obtain funds through the FES will be required to pay a contribution of 10% of marginal income over about US$515/week for a period of twenty years. In substance, it is a lot like the Yale Tuition Postponement Plan, which has never been replicated at a national level because of the heavy burden placed on high income earners. A team from UCL in London analyzed the plan and suggested that it will be largely self-supporting – but only because high-earning graduates in professional fields will pay in far more than they receive, thus creating a question of potential self-selection out of the program.

    In Colombia, Congress passed a law mandating ICETEX (the country’s student loan agency which mostly services students at private universities) to lower interest rates, offer generous loan forgiveness and adopt an income-contingent repayment system. However, almost simultaneously, the Government of Gustavo Petro actually raised student loan interest rates because it could no longer afford to subsidize them. This story has a ways to run, I think.

    On to the world government cutbacks. In the Netherlands, given the fall of the Schoof government and the call for elections this month, universities might reasonably have expected to avoid trouble in a budget delivered by a caretaker government. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case: instead, the 2026 imposed significant new cuts on the sector. In Argentina, Congress passed a law that would see higher education spending rise to 1% of GDP (roughly double the current rate). President Milei vetoed the law, but Congress overturned President Milei’s veto. In theory, that means a huge increase in university funding. But given the increasing likelihood of a new economic collapse in Argentina, it’s anyone’s guess how fulfilling this law is going to work out.

    One important debate that keeps popping up in growing higher education systems is the trade-off between quality and quantity with respect to institutions: that is, to focus money on a small number of high-quality institutions or a large number of, well, mediocre ones. Back in August, the Nigerian President, under pressure from the National Assembly to open hundreds of new universities to meet growing demand, announced a seven-year moratorium on the formation of new federal universities (I will eat several articles of clothing if there are no new federal universities before 2032). Conversely, in Peru, a rambunctious Congress passed laws to create 22 new universities in the face of Presidential reluctance to spread funds too thinly. 

    The newson Graduate Outcomes is not very good, particularly in Asia. In South Korea, youth employment rates are lower than they have been in a quarter-century, and the unemployment rate among bachelor’s grads is now higher than for middle-school grads. This is leading many to delay graduation. The situation in Singapore is not quite as serious but is still bad enough to make undergraduates fight for spots in elite “business cubs”. In China, the government was sufficiently worried about the employment prospects of the spring 2025 graduating class that it ordered some unprecedented measures to find them jobs, but while youth employment stayed low (that is, about 14%) at the start of the summer, the rate was back up to 19% by August. Some think these high levels of unemployment are changing Chinese society for good. Over in North America, the situation is not quite as dire, but the sudden inability of computer science graduates to find jobs seems deeply unfair to a generation that was told “just learn how to code”. 

    Withrespect to Research Funding and Policy, the most gobsmacking news came from Switzerland where the federal government decided to slash the budget of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) by 20%. In Australia, the group handling the Government’s Strategic Examination of Research and Development released six more “issue” papers which, amongst other things, suggested forcing institutions to choose particular areas of specialization in areas of government “priority”, a suggestion which was echoed in the UK both by the new head of UK Research and Innovation and the President of Universities UK.     

    But, of course, in terms of the politicization of research, very little can match the United States. In July, President Trump issued an Executive Order which explicitly handed oversight of research grants at the many agencies which fund extramural research to political appointees who would vet projects to ensure that they were in line with Trump administration priorities. Then, on the 1st of October (technically not Q3, but it’s too big a story to omit), the White House floated the idea of a “compact” with universities, under which institutions would agree to a number of conditions including shutting down departments that “punish, belittle” or “spark violence against conservative ideas” in return for various types of funding. Descriptions of the compact from academics ranged from “rotten” to “extortion”. At the time of writing, none of the nine institutions to which this had initially been floated had given the government an answer.

    And that was the quarter that was.

     

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  • Tuition Discounts Fuel Higher Ed Skepticism

    Tuition Discounts Fuel Higher Ed Skepticism

    Tuition discounting is a tactic private colleges have long used to control a primary revenue stream. But over the past decade, an increasingly precarious financial picture—driven in part by stagnating state funding and tuition caps—has pushed public institutions to adopt tuition-discounting policies, too.

    According to an issue brief from the Strada Education Foundation, the share of first-time, full-time undergraduates receiving institutional grant aid at public four-year institutions increased from 49 percent to 62 percent between 2014–15 and 2021–22. The average discount rates increased from 24 percent to 31 percent over the same period.

    Strada argued in the brief that tuition discounting sows confusion about the real cost of college among students and their parents. The practice also fuels increased public skepticism about the value of a college degree. It warned that growing financial uncertainty for public higher education could make the problem worse.

    “State postsecondary budgets soon may face new strains stemming from federal actions, demographic shifts, and broader fiscal pressures,” the brief said. “Without intentional alignment between states and institutions, this environment could drive even more aggressive tuition discounting in the years ahead—further complicating cost transparency for students, public missions, and the perceived value of education.”

    Tuition discounts allow institutions to maintain financial stability and recruit academically strong or underrepresented students who may be enticed by a big discount presented as a scholarship. However, increases in merit-based aid can “favor wealthier or out-of-state students at the expense of low-income, in-state residents,” according to Strada’s brief.

    “These practices also leave students, families, and citizens confused and without a transparent understanding of the cost of higher education,” the report said, noting that low-income and first-generation college students are especially vulnerable to uncertainty around tuition prices. “As the debate over the value of postsecondary education continues, exaggerated prices and confusion over actual costs weigh heavily on public trust and whether ‘college is worth it.’” 

    The report recommends a set of guiding principles to address tuition discounts:

    • Transparency and clarity for families;
    • Alignment between state and institutional aid;
    • Regular assessment of aid strategies;
    • Ensuring discounting supports public mission and access goals, not just revenue; and
    • Avoiding blunt, one-size-fits-all approaches.

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  • Judge Dismisses Tuition Price-Fixing Lawsuit

    Judge Dismisses Tuition Price-Fixing Lawsuit

    A federal judge in Illinois has dismissed a lawsuit accusing the College Board and 40 highly selective private colleges and universities of conspiring in a price-fixing scheme to inflate tuition costs.

    In a decision released last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis determined that the plaintiffs, a Boston University student and an alum of Cornell University, “have not plausibly alleged that Defendants entered into an agreement” demonstrating collusion on pricing.

    The class action lawsuit, filed just shy of a year ago, alleged that the defendants overcharged tuition for students of divorced or separated parents by considering the financial information of the noncustodial parent, as well as the custodial one, in calculating financial aid awards. The plaintiffs claimed that the formula increased their tuition by an average of $6,200.

    The lawsuit alleged that the price-fixing arrangement among the 40 institutions began in 2006, when the College Board began requiring both parents to submit financial information for its College Scholarship Service profiles, regardless of the student’’ custody arrangements. While last week’s decision acknowledged the practice inflated tuition prices at the institutions named, Ellis found no evidence that they had conspired.

    “Nothing in Plaintiffs’ complaint suggests that the University Defendants exchanged their own internal financial aid decisionmaking processes or guidelines or otherwise shared with the other University Defendants the amount of financial aid they planned to offer a particular student,” she wrote. “Nor does the complaint allege that the University Defendants all agreed on the same exact formula for calculating financial aid based on the [noncustodial parent’s] financial information.”

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