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McGruber writes:

An unexpected outbreak of common sense in US higher education: Utica College, a small, private university in upstate NY, announced it is cutting its annual tuition by 42 percent. (Could that be a Douglas Adams influence?)

According to College President Todd Hutton, the change will reduce the sticker shock that many parents and students have when seeing the tuition price. Hutton says there are fewer than a dozen students who pay the full price.

Right now, 61 percent of the tuition revenue coming from freshman is grants and subsidies directly from the college's pockets. Under the new tuition rate this number, called the "discount rate," would go down to 29 percent.

Essentially, Utica College would spend less of its own money to pay the tuition of students who can't afford the full price. It expects to make up the lost revenue through increased enrollment, which would come as a result of the college appearing to be more affordable.

Even though some of it sounds like a shell game, students will all make out better in the end, Hutton said. The least a student will save is $1,000. The most is more than $5,000, Hutton said.

While the college's net revenue per student will decrease, the colllege anticipates offsetting that loss with a higher number of students enrolled. The lower tuition will have a cascading effect since more prospective students will consider the college and end up enrolling in it.

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