Bethel University cuts undergraduate tuition by $18K starting next year

Bethel University officials announced this week that the school will cut tuition for all undergraduate students to about $26,000 — about $18,000 less than this year — starting in the fall of 2025.

The reduction won’t cost the university much to implement. Because of scholarships and aid, the new price reflects what most students would already have paid.

“This really is driven around transparency and being clear with our students and families,” Ross Allen, president of Bethel University, said in an interview.

Private colleges have gotten into a “pricing game,” where there’s a high sticker price but many discounts or scholarships are available to students who qualify. But that can be frustrating and confusing to navigate for families, Allen said.

Some people rule out private colleges altogether because of their perceived cost, said Paul McGinnis, Bethel University’s vice president of marketing and enrollment.

“Very few people pay the full sticker price, and we want to just be clear and simple,” he said, adding that much of the national conversation about whether college is worth it uses colleges’ sticker prices, which can be deceiving.

Students will also still be eligible for federal financial aid and scholarships from the Arden Hills school, which enrolls roughly 2,000 undergraduates and 2,000 students in its graduate, online and seminary programs combined.

This year, the cost for tuition, room and board and fees is about $57,000, McGinnis said, but that will drop to about $39,000 for everything next year. Room and board costs roughly $12,600, he said.

This isn’t a move to increase Bethel’s enrollment. The school saw increased enrollment last academic year in all four of its schools. There’s been “some growth” this fall, too, but official enrollment numbers haven’t been released yet, McGinnis said.

That’s despite broader demographic trends that have universities across the country competing for fewer college-age students, the result, in part, of lower birth rates decades ago.

The school has had to make budget cuts recently. In 2022, Bethel cut nine majors and minors while expanding two programs for graduate students and two for undergraduates.

Those cuts were needed to realign the budget with “enrollment realities,” said Joel Costa, Bethel University’s CFO. Enrollment and the school’s financial picture have improved lately, he said.

“We are making this change in a position of financial strength, which is important,” Costa said.

Concordia College made a similar move in cutting tuition by about $15,000 in the fall of 2021, officials said, while Concordia University-St. Paul tried it more than a decade ago. Bethel looked at those changes when deciding whether to cut tuition and decided to move forward with it, they said.