By Terry Gaskill-Barsness
hoosing a college can be stressful. Each student must decide if he or she wants to attend a party school or a more scholarly institution. Perhaps he wants a school with a liberal inclination, or maybe she desires an institution with a strong religious foundation. Another decision? Private or public.
Often, the biggest determining factor for choosing a university is price. According to recent findings by The Hechinger Report, many private colleges are reducing or freezing tuition to make private school education more accessible.
Average inflation-adjusted net tuition and fees at private colleges has actually dropped 4.1 percent from 2006–07 to 2011–12, according to The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities website.
Though perhaps not as prevalent in Oregon, instances of private institutions lowering or freezing tuition in order to better compete with public universities are taking place all over the nation: Indiana, Ohio, Vermont, Pennsylvania.
William Peace University in Raleigh, N.C. lowered its 2012–13 tuition by 7.7 percent.
In Minnesota, Concordia University lowered tuition by $10,000 dollars to combat the trend of university becoming less affordable.
At least 25 private colleges and universities implemented tuition freezes. Dartmouth College, as of this academic year, is offering free tuition for students whose family income is $100,000 or less—effectively eliminating student loans.
This is evidence that the idea of high tuition automatically equating to a better education is changing.
However, according to USA Today, private universities still maintain a level of prestige associated with smaller class sizes, which theoretically produce better relationships with teachers and a more thorough understanding of coursework.
Gallup polls this year indicate that Americans still consider private institutions more prestigious than public, meaning that privately funded schools are perceived to have more academic influence and world impact than their public counterparts.
Despite this, private colleges still find it necessary to reduce the sticker price in order to entice prospective students away from public universities.
Public universities nationwide have experienced problems with retention and graduation of students who simply get priced out of continuing education due to tuition increases, and who feel they are paying outrageous prices for minimal education.
In California, Christopher Campbell, a law student at the University of California, Irvine, is actively campaigning to amend the California State Constitution to ban state universities from raising tuition after a student has enrolled.
In Oregon, fiscal support for upper-level instruction is meager at best. As a result, Oregon now ranks in the bottom five nationally for state-supported education, according to Chris Broderick, Portland State associate vice president of university communications.
“State funding for PSU has declined sharply in the past decade,” Broderick said. “It has been well documented that Oregon spends more state money on prisons than it does on state universities. The result has been higher tuition for students.”
The message on the web—and in the media—that public university students are generally paying more for lower quality education signifies that public universities have to find other ways to maintain a competitive edge.
At PSU, the edge comes in the form of community involvement.
Despite a lack of state funding, PSU manages to challenge the notion that public universities are less influential than private, producing students that have real-world advantages. PSU does this by instilling an aptitude for civic engagement into its students and through its senior capstone courses.
PSU’s dedication to inspiring students’ success through community involvement has led to the college being named one of 10 “up-and-coming” universities by U.S. News and World Report, sharing the list with influential private colleges like Tulane and George Mason universities.
PSU may not always be flush with funds, but it knows how to use its status as a public university to keep education available to a wide variety of students. Perhaps in the future, the best way to judge a college will be to look at the way it engages students in learning how to be a responsible human being.