Ohio Northern University located in Ada, Ohio is comparable to AU, containing 3,577 students and also functions as a private institution.  

Last week, the school announced that their tuition will be cut for the 2014-2015 school year. Specifically, incoming freshmen will witness a 20-25 percent decrease in their tuition while the price for upperclassmen will remain the same. 

Unlike AU where the tuition changes affect all colleges equally, the tuition future ONU students will pay differs depending on their major.  For example, business students’ tuition totaled $36,470 this year but it will decrease by $8,970 as a result of the new initiative.  Engineering students paid $38,950 and will witness a $7,450 cut in their tuition. 

AU’s Vice President of Enrollment Management and Marketing Scott Van Loo indicated that the effect of area schools implementing similar measures remains unknown. 

“As far as ONU’s announcement, we’re not certain if that will impact us one way or another,” Van Loo said.

He indicated that other universities may initiate similar tuition resets in the future.

“Institutions are, if they haven’t been already, really taking a look at the issue of pricing and affordability,” Van Loo said.

Regardless of the measures taken by competing universities, AU has seen a positive effect so far in terms of applicants. 

“The indicator that we look at right now at this point is the number of freshmen applying versus last year, and we are trending ahead of last year,” Van Loo said.

While the future impact of the changes for AU and ONU remain unknown, Concordia University in Saint Paul, Minnesota implemented a tuition reset last year and has experienced success this school year with their new initiative.  

Like AU, Concordia’s tuition decreased $10,000 with the new tuition price totaling $19,700 compared to $29,700.  This school year, Concordia has witnessed 61 percent higher enrollment, bringing in a total of 422 students.  They also saw a 30 percent increase in applicants when they first decided to reduce tuition.

Director of Marketing & Communication at Concordia University Jason DeBoer-Moran indicated that numerous factors contributed to this success.  

“We credit this growth to sustained interest in Concordia due to the tuition reset as well as the increased media attention that came as a result,” DeBoer-Moran said. “We also entered into our largest general brand awareness exercise in recent history in support of this effort, so that had a play as well.”

The university faced similar challenges as Ashland in the past, which prompted them to evaluate their situation and consider decreasing tuition. 

“Concordia had conducted several pricing sensitivity studies over the past five years. We were aware that people wanted to attend a private non-profit school, but deemed the cost too high,” DeBoer-Moran said.

Overall, DeBoer-Moran said that the transition has been easier than anticipated.

“Honestly, there really weren’t that many challenges in implementing this,” DeBoer-Moran said. 

“We paid such close attention to our communication planning and worked with several consultancies to help us identify pain points ahead of time. In the end, we had a very smooth launch,” he said.