What Is a Tuition Freeze, and Does It Actually Help Keep College Affordable?
Credit: Rockaa / E+ / Getty Images- A tuition freeze is when a college, university, or system maintains tuition at a certain rate for a set amount of time. The practice received bipartisan support as a college affordability effort.
- However, a new report from the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center outlines how tuition freezes may actually end up harming low-income students in the long run.
- The report’s authors say tuition freezes cause colleges and universities to lower institutional aid or increase tuition later on, disproportionately affecting low-income students.
Since the 1960s, college tuition and related expenses have risen astronomically. Education equity and access organizations, advocates, and research institutions have decried the high cost, and students have struggled under its burden.
States and college and university systems have implemented policies in an effort to save students money. One of these methods is freezing tuition at a set rate for a period of time.
A tuition freeze is different from free tuition, allowing colleges and universities to still make money off students. However, a tuition freeze for one institution or region of schools can put a strain on neighboring institutions that may have higher tuition.
A new report from the Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center outlines how tuition freezes can have unintended consequences, particularly for the low-income students who policymakers claim these freezes help.
While freezing tuition has accrued bipartisan support as an effort to increase college affordability, the report’s authors suggest that freezes can lose colleges money and often result in a decrease in institutional aid or an increase in tuition costs once the freeze has lifted.
Low-income students can end up bearing the brunt of that cost burden.
What Is a Tuition Freeze?
A tuition freeze — sometimes called a tuition cap — is when a college, university, or system maintains a set tuition rate for a certain amount of time. Tuition can be frozen for semesters, academic years, or multiple years. It means students can expect a set or standard cost for their tuition, in addition to costs associated with fees, labs, textbooks, and living.
These freezes are often encouraged by state or local governments to increase affordability and accessibility to higher education options. Sometimes, tuition freezes have restrictions, such as applying only to state residents or students who pay up front.
In the past, institutions like Purdue University, the University of Arizona, and public universities in South Dakota have implemented tuition freezes.
A report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association found that between 2017 and 2022 3 in 5 states had placed tuition freezes or limits on public four-year colleges. The report also found that tuition freezes were less common at two-year colleges than four-year institutions.
During that time period, tuition freezes had become more common than tuition increase limits.
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Potential Unintended Consequences
Despite tuition increases, many students are actually paying less than the sticker price of tuition due to institutional, federal, and private grants and scholarships.
However, tuition freezes have remained popular as policymakers have worked to make college affordable for more students.
The Postsecondary Education and Economics Research Center report suggests that freezing tuition has a trickle-down effect, shifting costs to low-income students.
“Despite their intended effect of lowering the cost of education, our analysis shows that institutions’ responses to tuition freezes and caps may undermine those effects, particularly by leading colleges to cut back on institutional aid, offsetting reductions in sticker price such that net price is not lowered,” the report reads.
The report’s authors point out that because institutional aid is rarely regulated, it can be adjusted to compensate for lost tuition. According to the report, low-income students are more likely to receive institutional aid.
The authors suggest that policymakers consider or even regulate net tuition price, so as to not make up lost tuition revenue at the expense of low-income students.