Starting in fall 2025, listed tuition for all new and continuing undergraduate Bethel University students will decrease from $44,050 to $25,990, part of an effort to cut sticker prices to provide more transparency on cost, according to university officials.
The cut will apply to students in the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s undergraduate college. Scholarships and federal financial aid will be available for additional support, according to the university in Arden Hills.
The cut is possible, when it might not have been in previous years, as the university has reduced investments in some programs and increased it in others that are growing in order to support enrollment volume, said Joel Costa, Bethel University chief financial officer and vice president of operations.
Those investments have largely been in the university’s healthcare and mental health-related programs, according to Paul McGinnis, Bethel University vice president of marketing and enrollment.
“We are coming at this in a position of financial strength for the university after having realigned our expense base with our enrollment realities over the last couple of years,” Costa said.
With the listed tuition decrease, students’ financial assistance packages will be revised, but no current students will see their total cost for the 2025 to 2026 academic year exceed what it would have been before the change, according to the university.
Communication goes out to students
Current students have received a letter or email from the university going over what their financial aid would have been before the tuition change and what it is now, McGinnis said.
“And instead of creating those feel-good discounts, we’re going to just say, you know what? We’re not going to do that. We’re just going to say what our tuition is,” he said.
Decades ago, sticker prices and net prices for universities and colleges were much closer together, McGinnis said. The model of having a higher sticker price was well-intentioned, he said, having students that could afford to pay more do so and then using that additional revenue to support low-income students through scholarships.
However, though net prices for private colleges have stayed relatively flat for the last 15 years, sticker prices have gone up astronomically, McGinnis said.
Many students, especially first-generation students and those from underrepresented backgrounds, aren’t aware of that difference between sticker and net price and will not even consider private colleges as a result, McGinnis added.
From fall 2022 to fall 2023, Bethel University’s undergraduate enrollment numbers grew 1.4%, but fell 5% from fall 2020 to fall 2023 and have not yet gotten back to pre-pandemic levels, according to McGinnis. Student numbers did grow in all of the university’s four schools by 3% from fall 2022 to fall 2023.
Other private schools
Concordia University in St. Paul, which slashed its tuition by a third for the 2013 academic school year, has grown its enrollment numbers since making the cut.
Tuition at that time went from $29,700 per year to $19,700 per year. In the fall of 2012, Concordia enrolled 1,200 undergraduates. In the fall of 2023, that number was at 1,723 and the university expects another record for fall 2024 enrollment numbers, according to Joe Thornton, communications representative for Concordia University.
Concordia’s undergraduate tuition for the 2024 to 2025 academic year of $25,600 also remains lower than the university’s tuition price had been before the 2013 cut.
It’s one thing to do a tuition reset and another to maintain it, said Eric LaMott, Concordia University provost and chief operating officer.
“That administrative discipline to focus on the net revenues ongoing and not to jump to try to increase tuition too fast, or ways that limit the student enrollment, that’s an area we often see schools that start this and then end off failing because they don’t maintain discipline, and really aren’t keeping the students at the center of their decision making,” LaMott said.
The University of St. Thomas uses a traditional tuition pricing model with an emphasis on scholarships that help make tuition as affordable as possible for students and their families, according to university officials. While the publicly-listed tuition price is $52,820 per year, it’s important to note that 100 percent of first year students are offered a four-year St. Thomas Scholarship, upward of $25,000 annually.
Meanwhile, tuition at Macalester College and fees for full-time undergraduates in the academic year 2022 to 2023 was $62,500, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But the average net price for full-time undergraduates for that year was $38,571.
A different list price
Some university leaders may believe an institution could appear less prestigious with a lower tuition sticker price. And, students may see smaller scholarships as not recognizing their work. However, that’s not necessarily reflective of the university’s overall value, said Bethel University President Ross Allen.
With the cut Bethel is making, the university is going to go against some norms and demonstrate its value and emphasize clarity, Allen said.
“We are going to continue to have the same value, the same quality, the same program that we’ve had. It’s just at a different list price,” Allen said.
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