Episode 33: Decrypting the Cost of College with Crowdsourced Data
In 2020, outstanding student loan debt increased 12%. The total outstanding balance? More than $1.57 trillion. It is the second-largest type of consumer debt outstanding—mortgages are first. The questions are always the same: Why is tuition so expensive? Why are 18-year-olds taking out six-figure loans with zero collateral?
Most importantly, how long can this last?
Mark Salisbury, Co-Founder and CEO of TuitionFit, joins this episode of Illuminate Higher Education to share how his company is helping to solve this problem. Mark has worked in higher education for over 25 years, starting as a soccer coach and admissions counselor before transitioning to a director of institutional research and an academic administrator. He earned his Ph.D. in higher education from the University of Iowa. Mark studies how colleges and universities succeed (or fail) in helping students learn and grow.
Explore a few highlights from their conversation in the following Q&A, then listen to the full podcast to gain a better understanding of the college tuition “game.”
Q: What are some of the driving forces behind rapidly increasing tuition prices?
Choosing a college is hard. Students are asked to make a potentially life-altering decision at a pivotal point in their lives. It can easily become an emotional decision.
Tuition, in many ways, is a marketing tool that helps communicate quality. As humans, we tend to associate a higher price with more value. An expensive college must provide better quality education, right? Students and parents struggle to figure this out. There is quite a bit at stake—will the wrong decision derail my child’s education? Will they miss out on important experiences?
Michael Norton, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, describes it this way: “We’re motivated to splurge because we’re seeking peak experiences.” About four decades ago, the higher education industry shifted to a new pricing model—one that boasts a shockingly high sticker price that alludes to the “peak experience” of attending that school. Once a student is accepted, the complicated process of assembling the “financial aid package” begins. The student has already bought into the institution and made an emotional connection. Now, they just have to figure out how to pay for it.
Q: How does TuitionFit help?
We believe everyone should have access to an affordable, accessible, equitable college education. A major challenge is that college pricing strategies are often hidden behind large sticker prices and a variety of scholarships, grants, and loans pulled together to cover a student’s costs. Our goal is to create a database of real, transparent college pricing data. We are, in many ways, the Kelley Blue Book® of College Pricing.
This kind of data sharing is critical for students, parents, and the colleges themselves. They often know nothing more than we do about how competing institutions set tuition prices and build aid packages. External benchmark data can help colleges improve their offerings, lower costs, and drive innovation.
Q: Why is the free, open exchange of tuition data important?
There is little visibility into how colleges award financial aid. The price a student will actually pay is outlined in a financial aid award letter detailing a mix of scholarships, grants, and loans that should cover the cost. They offer certain students one price and other students another price. Those differences vary primarily on a family’s financial situation and a student’s academic profile.
We crowdsource data from individual students across the country—they upload their financial aid award letters to our website, adding to our ever-growing database of real college prices. In exchange for sharing their award letters with us, we grant students unlimited access to our database to help them become more informed and make a choice that works for them.
Functioning democracy requires an educated populace. We need higher education. Perhaps more importantly, we need students to feel confident that they are getting their money’s worth. Rather than turning to for-profit college ranking publications, they can turn to a new source of data—their peers, who are trying to figure it out, too.
Listen to the full podcast episode for more details.
Connect with Mark Salisbury on LinkedIn. Learn more about TuitionFit by visiting TuitionFit.org and following on Twitter @TuitionFit_.
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This episode is brought to you by N2N’s Illuminate App, the iPaaS for Higher Education.
About N2N Services
Founded in 2010, N2N is committed to serving educational institutions and helping them figure out how to serve their students, faculty, and staff using the most innovative technologies and solutions available in the marketplace. Over the last decade, N2N has served over 300 academic institutions and enabled their student success journeys.
N2N Services Inc. is a leader in enterprise application integration and strategic advisory services for higher education, At N2N, we are committed to providing the highest quality solutions and collaboratively building student-centric solutions.
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