Bucking the Trend: Some Small Colleges are Cutting Tuition

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At at time when college costs seem to be spiraling out of control, an increasing number of smaller private colleges are actually cutting tuition rates to survive.

Since the 1990s, at least a dozen private colleges across the US have cut their tuition rates including Ohio Muskingum College and Bethany College in West Virginia.

The latest school to cut its tuition is Eureka College in Illinois. Coined the Eureka Initiative, the school will slash its tuition by 30 percent in 2004 to $13,000. The downside to this move, however, is that the school will be eliminating some of its school-provided financial aid.

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We applaud Eureka's bold step and we certainly hope more schools follow its lead. We are also happy that this initiative, which lowers everyone's tuition to the $13,000 base before academic achievement scholarships, helps to take some of the unnecessary complexity out of the financial aid process. (That alone, may result in some savings for the school as well.)

The downside to this though is that the most needy and low-income students may end up having to pay a bit more to attend the school.