Anonymous wrote:There is quite simply a mismatch between tuition prices and what families are able to pay.

Americans are broke. Even UMC ones live on tight budgets.

+1

Tuition has far outpaced wage gains over the last 40 years

"CC doesn’t cross with those schools. Mostly they are battling with California and west coast schools to fill their class."

Colorado College's self-chosen comparison schools extend nationally, however:

Bates
Bowdoin
Carleton
Colby
Colgate
Holy Cross
Davidson
Hamilton
Kenyon
Lafayette
Macalester
Middlebury
Pitzer
Wesleyan
Whitman

Anonymous wrote:Interesting that Williams is so tuition dependent. Guess things are easier when you are seen as the best of the best

In saying "Williams’ tuition dependency is not publicly available," the article appears to contradict itself, however.

What’s highly selective? Bates crosses with Colby and Bowdoin etc. All those schools have sub-15% admit rates. Our counselor showed us that Bates had 12000 apps this year for like 525 spots. At those schools, they don’t need to tuition discount to yield a class. And so they don’t. Neatly everyone at those schools is full pay, was full pay for prep / private school, and even pre-K. Hypothetical merit aid has zero bearing on admissions decisions for nearly all of those kids and families.

CC doesn’t cross with those schools. Mostly they are battling with California and west coast schools to fill their class. They didn’t make their class about 3 or 4 cycles ago, which their CDS data shows. So nothing really new here. They are trying to figure it out. There is nothing to suggest a rush to tuition discounting. Instead the article says they want to focus recruitment to other regions. Which sorta makes sense when you think about it.

You have to look at schools that compete for students with each other and then measure them to derive any insights. Skidmore competes with St. Lawrence and Union — what do those three schools have in common? Tuition discounting and very similar admit rates.

Kenyon competes with Midwest schools — you need to see how they compare.

You can’t compare Kenyon to CC when they are not really competing to yield the same student class. Or Bates to Kenyon for that matter. And you need to understand the admissions dynamics for each school — again, CC missed its class a few years ago so nothing new here as they try to refocus on what works for them.

I am from Colorado (live here now) and love it very much but I have serious concerns about the climate there (water, fire, growth) I am not sure I’ll encourage my kid to apply there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems notable that Forbes recently assigned Colorado Colorado a financial grade of A+.

Yes. I noticed multiple schools with A grades have trouble with enrollment. I don’t think an A is a slam dunk. Parents need to dig deeper.

I find it difficult to believe that a college with a $1bil endowment and 2,000 students is actually struggling. They may have to make cuts on luxuries, but they definitely aren’t struggling, even with enrollment issues.

Forbes is a pay-to-play publisher of third party content. I can't believe people put any value into it.

There is quite simply a mismatch between tuition prices and what families are able to pay.

Americans are broke. Even UMC ones live on tight budgets.

Anonymous wrote:It seems notable that Forbes recently assigned Colorado Colorado a financial grade of A+.

Yes. I noticed multiple schools with A grades have trouble with enrollment. I don’t think an A is a slam dunk. Parents need to dig deeper.

Interesting that Williams is so tuition dependent. Guess things are easier when you are seen as the best of the best

It seems notable that Forbes recently assigned Colorado Colorado a financial grade of A+.

This isn't confined to Colorado College. There is a race to the Top 50 national research universities and Top 10 liberal arts colleges. All other colleges are going to be hurt.

The west coast lacs are all struggling other the Claremont Colleges, for various reasons. Reed and Colorado are similar, in that, they have pretty quirky academic cultures, but Colorado has always been very dependent on wealthy students. In the west coast, there’s much more emphasis on going to public universities, so schools like Whitman, Colorado, and Reed really struggle.

This is only the beginning for all less-competitive colleges. Mediocre Public schools and private schools are in danger. People need to do their homework and not let their kid go to a college likely to close in the next 5 years.
Pick a flagship but even then--WVU--some flagships are on the brink of collapse. For CA, NC and VA there are multiple flagships not on the brink of collapse.
Or pick a private University in the T50 sorted by endowment per student, or LAC in the Top 20. There are borderline-financially-stable LACs just outside the usnews T20.
Avoid the schools that "buy" students with huge merit given to a large portion of students.

Looks like Colorado College can't be as selective as it wants to be. Yield continues to creep lower, CC having trouble filling out its classes and meeting revenue targets. Perhaps not surprising for a school that costs nearly $100k/ year and is stingy with the merit aid. Like many less well endowed liberal arts colleges, they will need to increase admission rates and cut tuition (i.e. start offering "merit aid"/ tuition discounts to middle achieving full pay students). Seems like this is also happening at Bates, Kenyon and other wannabe high-selectivity LACs.

https://thecatalystnews.com/2026/04/30/colorado-college-boosts-marketing-efforts-after-two-years-of-underenrollment/