As freshmen walk onto Syracuse University’s campus next semester, experts say they’ll start their college careers at one of the most expensive schools in the United States.

SU now joins Ivy League schools, including Brown University or Yale University, with an expected total cost of attendance of more than $70,000. While most students won’t pay that full price because they receive federal financial aid or merit scholarships, experts say SU has to be careful with tuition hikes beyond this threshold.

“That’s a lot of money,” said Donald Heller, a tuition expert and provost of the University of San Francisco.

In interviews with The Daily Orange, higher education experts said a $3,300 tuition premium that will be tacked onto SU’s new undergraduate costs next year is a major component of why costs are crossing the $70,000 mark. The premium is part of a $100 million fundraising initiative called Invest Syracuse.

The university, in total, is expected to increase the cost of attendance by 7.9 percent next year, including the premium. Mark Kantrowitz, an expert on college tuition and financial aid, said the total increase in costs at SU is relatively high, but the university isn’t alone.

Kantrowitz, the publisher of PrivateStudentLoans.guru, a website that provides college students loan borrowing tips, said other major universities are starting to drift toward attendance costs edging over $70,000 per year. Brown University, for example, has projected a total cost of attendance of almost $74,000 next year. Cornell University is expected to have a total annual cost of attendance of nearly $73,000 for certain colleges at the university.

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A report published earlier this month by the SU Senate’s Committee on Budget and Fiscal Affairs stated that next year’s undergraduate costs will be just below the projected median costs of attendance at a group of 26 peer institutions. Some SU peers include Cornell University, the University of Rochester, Boston College and Boston University, among others. Most of the university’s peers are on the East Coast.

The university has pledged to fundraise $40 million to support undergraduate scholarships and financial aid, as part of the five-year Invest Syracuse plan.

Most students will pay the net price, which is the total cost of attendance subtracted by the amount of scholarships and financial aid. The average net price of tuition at SU is $28,000, according to the university.

But Laurie Kopp Weingarten, co-founder and director of One-Stop College Counseling, said an expected 3.9 tuition base increase at SU coupled with the new Invest Syracuse premium could, in the future, affect upper-middle class families who don’t qualify for federal financial aid but can’t afford the increasingly expensive university.

“I think there’s going to be a point where parents push back. Because there are a lot of other options,” Weingarten said.

SU set a record last fall for the highest number of applications in its history. As of Jan. 29, the university announced that it had received more than 34,000 first-year undergraduate applications.

Maurice Harris, dean of SU’s undergraduate admissions, in a statement to The Daily Orange on Tuesday said that as the university “generates new revenue to advance the Academic Strategic Plan, Invest Syracuse and Campus Framework, prospective students and families recognize the return on investment, the value and the quality of the Syracuse student experience inside and outside the classroom.”

Harris also said the pool of applications was diverse and “impressive.”

But experts agreed that it’s unlikely that tuition costs will drop at private, four-year universities in the next 10 to 20 years. On the contrary, experts said some major colleges in the U.S. could have costs of attendance north of $100,000 at the end of that time frame.

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Weingarten said upper-middle class families might consider sending kids to other regional schools over SU, such as Binghamton University, if costs continue to rise. As of January, Binghamton had a projected total cost of attendance of about $27,000 for in-state residents. Projected costs for both out-of-state and international students were about $42,000 at Binghamton.

Parents, moving forward, might also consider sending kids to one of SU’s peers with lower costs of attendances, Weingarten said. Boston College, a peer, announced last week that its cost of attendance will be just under $70,000 next year.

“The families that bleed Orange are going to keep going to Syracuse. Whether they’re legacy families, or families that are ‘so in love with Syracuse,’” Weingarten said. “But at some point, you just have to say ‘Does this make sense financially?’ Even if you have money.”

Martin Van Der Werf, associate director of editorial and postsecondary policy at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said universities are starting to understand they are reaching a point at which most people can’t pay a given total cost of attendance.

Edging costs above $70,000 could be a way for SU to test whether students are still attracted to the university if that much money is required for attendance, Van Der Werf said.

“It sounds like a pretty dramatic tuition hike,” Van Der Werf said.

Published on March 20, 2018 at 9:35 pm

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek