Dive Brief:
- Some colleges have borrowed from an old retail playbook in which original prices are jacked up in order to turn around and offer staggeringly steep discounts to masses of students.
- At Drexel University, for example, 98% of students don't pay the full "sticker price" tuition and one expert points out that there are almost 200 schools where no one pays full price.
- This continues despite a recent trend of "tuition resets" in which schools — mostly smaller colleges — lower tuition across the board and more students pay something closer to the sticker price.
Dive Insight:
As the article points out, a lot of this is purely psychological. But unlike sales at most retailers, college shopping does not lend itself to direct comparison and shopping around. And because it's a four-year investment of time and money, the games schools play have higher stakes.