Smart Pricing Strategies for Tuition with Lucie Lapovsky, PhD

Sarah Holtan, PhD, sits down with Lucie Lapovsky, PhD, a financial expert in higher education and Principal of Lapovsky Consulting. In today's episode, discover how tuition pricing strategies could hold the key to college sustainability, especially in the face of declining enrollments and a challenging educational landscape. Lucie's insights offer a fresh perspective, challenging the conventional high tuition, high discount model many institutions still follow.Lucie breaks down the importance of understanding the true cost of education, emphasizing that tuition resets are about smart pricing, not just sticker shock reduction. Her advice is to look beyond the immediate gains to the long-term benefits of a pricing strategy aligned with your institution's values and market demands. Curious about what happens after a college decides to reveal its true cost to students? Lucie’s conversation reveals surprising outcomes that can enhance financial resilience and market perception.Episode Highlights:02:23 - What most people know today is that not everyone pays the published price. There's a variety of ways students get financial aid or what we sometimes call discounts off of that price. So there's how you're perceived in the marketplace, what the message that price gives to students and their families, and then how it contributes to supporting the programs at your institution, how the revenue contributes to supporting them.06:09 - Give them something that doesn't cost the college much or anything, but is a prestige indicator. So, for example, you might say, we are accepting your child, and we want you to know that they are part of our Honors Program, and this will provide them with a dinner with our Board of Trustees, invitation to special lectures, or, meeting with our special lecturers when they come. Things that parents can go and brag about and get other parents to say, "Wow, that child is special," rather than just the size of an award.17:00 - It's amazing how many schools do not have good data systems and where there are data systems, there are multiple ones that don't agree. And so, number one, irrespective of what they're using data for, it's very challenging for a school to operate strategically without good data. And so, I will provide schools I'm working with a template of the data I need. And in some schools, they'll send it back to me within twenty four hours. And in other schools, a month later, we're still struggling to get the data and it's wrong, and we keep redoing it, and it's this system and that system. And so I would urge schools, no matter what you're thinking about, you want a really good data. You want be able to know how much you're discounting the students, what types of students, but you also know want to know what your cost of education cost.Sarah Holtan, PhDLinkedInLucie Lapovsky, PhD.LinkedInWebsite