Bridgewater College announced on Monday that it will cut its tuition by more than 60% to be more transparent about the cost of higher education. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Last year, the total annual tuition at Bridgewater College was posted at $40,300. Starting with the 2024-25 academic year, it will drop to $15,000. Like most small, private colleges, Bridgewater has used a "high-tuition, high-aid" model for decades in communicating the cost of education. As the college's president, David Bushman, explains –
DAVID BUSHMAN: The idea behind it is, and its start, really, was to help provide access for some needier students. And so a portion of some students' tuition dollars was essentially used to subsidize, to provide a scholarship. … And so, over time, more and more students get more and more of these discounts, and it leads to … higher sticker prices.
And that basically results in a false inflation of the price tag, and then virtually all students getting a discount. A study released this year by the National Association of College and University Business Officers found that undergrads at private colleges were paying, on average, just 49% of the posted tuition.
BUSHMAN: The bigger problem that I see with this, and really the reason we're doing this, is because these very high tuition sticker prices that almost no one pays … it's dissuading lots of families from thinking they can afford higher education, and they don't even apply. They don't even look.
The drop to $15,000 would put Bridgewater at the second-cheapest 'sticker price' among 23 private colleges in Virginia that WMRA reviewed. Currently, Bridgewater's combined tuition and fees are about 12% higher than the average of those institutions – where the rates range from just under $15,000, at Virginia Union University, to almost $65,000, at Washington & Lee.
