BEST COLLEGE VALUES

Schools tout efforts
to keep tuition in
check

Updated 1h 3m ago |

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

As colleges and universities begin setting
tuition for the upcoming academic year, a
few schools are already touting their efforts
to keep costs down.

By Jim
R. Bounds, BloombergDuke University in
Durham, N.C., is on The Princeton Review's list
of 100 Best Value Colleges for 2011. Enlarge

By Jim R. Bounds, Bloomberg

Duke University in Durham, N.C., is on The Princeton
Review's list of 100 Best Value Colleges for 2011.

Last Thursday, the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia announced a
3.9% tuition increase, its "second smallest ...
in 43 years." A day earlier, The University of
the South in Sewanee, Tenn., released the
news that its board approved a 10% cut in
tuition and fees for the coming academic
year.

•100 Best Value Colleges for 2011: Click
the money jar image below on the left.
A cynic might think the schools are angling
to stay below the Education Department's
radar. As part of an ongoing plan to help
keep spiraling tuition charges in check, the
department will annually publish online,
starting in July, a list of schools with the
highest percentage increases in tuition and
fees in a three-year period, along with the 5%
of colleges reporting the highest overall
sticker prices. Schools that don't provide the
data risk losing access to billions of dollars
in federal student aid.

But colleges also recognize that families are
struggling. Nearly two-thirds of incoming
students reported that the "current
economic situation significantly affected my
college choice," says an annual survey of
more than 200,000 full-time first-year
students attending four-year colleges. It was
released last month by UCLA's Higher
Education Research Institute.


TOP 20 'VALUE' PICKS

PUBLIC

1. University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
2. City University of New York - Hunter College (New York, N.Y.)
3. New College of Florida (Sarasota)
4. Florida State University (Tallahassee)
5. University of Colorado-Boulder
6. State University of New York-Binghamton
7. University of Georgia (Athens)
8. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Blacksburg)
9. Texas A&M University (College Station)
10. University of Oklahoma (Norman)

PRIVATE

1. Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, Pa.)
2. Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.)
3. Wesleyan College (Macon, Ga.)
4. Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.)
5. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.)
6. Williams College (Williamstown, Mass.)
7. Rice University (Houston, Texas)
8. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.)
9. Amherst College (Amherst, Mass.)
10. Wellesley College (Wellesley, Mass.)