Middlebury and Other Colleges Are Trying to Make Tuition Prices Less Confusing

Middlebury College has announced that students from families with household incomes up to $175,000 can enroll tuition-free, joining a growing list of schools trying to cut through public confusion about what college actually costs, NPR reported.

The offer may sound like a generous expansion of financial aid. A $175,000 income is more than double the nation's median household income. But while a few additional families will benefit — 35 to 50 in the incoming class at Middlebury, which typically enrolls about 630 new students a year, the college says — most people from families earning $175,000 or less already attend without having to pay tuition.

The real purpose, experts told NPR, is to confront a problem that has soured many Americans on higher education: how hard it is to figure out the real price. "Let's make it as non-complicated as possible," said Ian Baucom, Middlebury's president. "If your family income is $175,000 or less, at Middlebury, you don't pay tuition." What the school is doing, he said, is trying to "just [be] really clear and get that out of the way, and then let the students decide."

A sticker-price problem, not always a new discount

Nearly 80 percent of families considering college eliminated a school from consideration based on the price, according to a survey by the student loan company Sallie Mae cited by NPR. Admissions officials say the confusion is especially hard on low-income students and young people whose parents did not go to college.

Middlebury is the latest of a growing number of schools to make tuition guarantees, including Princeton (for most families earning up to $250,000, with typical assets), the University of Chicago ($250,000), MIT ($200,000), Harvard ($200,000), Swarthmore ($200,000) and Davidson ($175,000).

Most of those schools are not necessarily lowering their prices — just trying to make them clearer, said Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College who studies higher education finance and is the author of the book "Hidden Tuition: An Insider's Guide to College Pricing and Financial Aid." When families see the announcements, they think the college is cutting the price, Levine told NPR, and that reaction is "almost a perfect example of the misperceptions of the pricing system."

The distinction matters. A family that hears "tuition-free up to $175,000" may assume a brand-new discount, when the more accurate story is often that need-based aid was already covering tuition at that income and the college is finally saying so in a sentence people can remember. For students still shopping, that clarity can keep a campus on the list long enough for them to apply. For schools, it is also a marketing answer to a political problem: Americans have grown tired of a pricing system that looks unaffordable until, sometimes, it isn't.

Baucom's pitch is deliberately simple. The promise does not resolve every cost — room, board and other fees can still add up — but it is meant to stop families from walking away at the first glance of a sticker price. Whether more colleges follow will depend on whether clearer language actually changes who applies, not just who feels better about a brochure.