The College Fix

Sewanee got palm fronds laid out before it in the spring for doing the unthinkable: Cutting tuition.

Enter Sewanee: The University of the South. Located in Sewanee, Tennessee, this small private university gained national attention recently when it announced a bold plan – to cut tuition by 10 percent.

“The economic climate has changed in recent years, and higher education’s approach to how families pay for their children’s educations must change with it,” said Laurie Saxton, Director of Media Relations at Sewanee via e-mail. “The days of high fees and high discount rates are coming to an end.”

But some aren’t thrilled with the tuition cut in practice — because it also reduced merit scholarships.

Some students say the result is that tuition is only about $500 less than the previous year — far short of the $4,600 savings they and their parents anticipated. […]

Last year, 248 undergraduate students received non-need-based scholarships, out of 1,429 students in the school, and some say they feel misled.

But school officials said the university focused on reducing the total cost of attending Sewanee when it decided to reduce tuition, which had increased almost 30 percent in the last five years.

“Individual family circumstances and need may vary, but no returning Sewanee student will pay more next year due to a tuition increase than he or she is paying now, and most will pay less,” according to the announcement Feb. 16.

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