It might not seem like much for a school that was charging $53,850, but Brookyn Law has cut its tuition 15%, to $45,850, effective in the 2015-16 academic year. It will hold tuition at the current level in the coming academic year. The one year delay will presumably give Brooklyn a chance to reformulate its budget - and payroll - before the price drop. It will also insure that the school does not overextend itself this year, given that its scholarship offers have been premised on revenue from the higher tuition.
It's always difficult to assess what a price cut will do to net revenue, given that schools discount so aggressively. More than anything, I suspect that this move is designed to maintain, or increase, the size of its applicant pool. I'm guessing that, once a school's sticker goes north of $50K, a sizable number of prospective students simply look elsewhere.
I do think there is one aspect of the WSJ article that's worth noting. For the first time in a long time, I see that the writer used an "employed in any capacity whatsover" employment number to describe graduate placement success. He described Brooklyn as having an 88% placement rate, Fordham, a 90% placement rate, and CUNY an 80% placement rate.
Good short-term publicity. But since even some public schools (whose tuitions are in the teens and twenties) have suffered admissions losses, I doubt the difference between 53k and 45k will make a big long-run difference.
My view (which I can't back up): employment matters more than experience in getting students. For a degree that is perceived as a one-way trip to Unemploymentville, one dollar is too many.
Posted by: ML | April 09, 2014 at 11:08 PM