The Kansas City Star has a story up now entitled To Attract Students, Law Schools at KU and UMKC Engage in a Tuition Border War. The University of Kansas Law is offering Missouri applicants from 11 counties in-state tuition. I imagine that KU was already offering this deal to many of the stronger applicants from Missouri. More than anything, it's probably about expanding KU's applicant pool by making its scholarship policies more transparent. And I suspect that the Star missed the real takeaway from this story. UMKC and KU draw a slightly different cohort of students. UMKC isn't KU's prime Missouri competition; Mizzou is. With this deal, a Kansas City native might reconsider moving to Columbia and perhaps even stay at home and attend KU.
Law Tuition Price Wars On The Plains
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Dan,
Headline should read, "Bleeding Kansas."
Dan – thanks for the post. Our move to expand in-state tuition to Kansas City, Missouri residents makes perfect sense if you've ever been to Kansas City and tried to figure out where KC-Kansas ends and KC-Missouri begins. To make a long story short, it's tough as the state line arbitrarily runs through the middle of the city, with no natural border dividing most of it. At least in Philly you have the Delaware River as a border.
Since we're only forty miles from KC, it's been odd for us to have to divide our KC applicants into resident and non-resident groups. We have students who grew up bleeding Jayhawk crimson and blue go off to Mizzou because of the tuition issue. We hope offering the new scholarship will let area students choose their law school on an equal basis.
But Prof. Freeman, the whole question is why now? Did state line road change recently?
flp – The decline in the applicant pool is definitely putting pressure on law schools to maintain their applicant pools. Offering resident rate tuition to students who, if not for a quirk of history, would qualify for it seemed like a pretty good place to start.
As I read the article, this is no big deal. Apparently, KU has given instate tuition to most of their incoming students from the Missouri side of the KC area previously and is now just making this a publicly announced policy. In a difficult market for attracting students, this is a logical step to take.
Correction, it was UMKC that was giving instate tuition to Kansas residents. This is simply a mirror image of what their closest competitor was doing.
And then there's this–Washburn Law is offering in-state tuition to KS, MO, and CO residents. Starting next year, it will add NE, OK, and TX to the list. http://www.washburnlaw.edu/admissions/residency/index.html