A footnote to my “Cutting Virginians No Slack” post from this morning: I was doing some research for a non-blog project when I came across this chart from a March 2015 Virginia Commonwealth University budget workshop. For all their tuition hikes, Virginia colleges and universities perceive themselves to be experiencing chronic fiscal stress. One strategy for alleviating that stress is to increase the number of out-of-state students, who pay higher tuitions than in-state students.
It’s great money if you can get it, which the College of William & Mary and the University of Virginia are pretty good at doing. W&M, for instance, enrolls 33.5% out-of-state students who account for 61.7% of undergraduate tuition revenue. W&M, I suspect, could enroll more but restrains itself from doing so for political reasons.
But it’s a harder slog for Virginia universities, like VCU, that lack national reputations. VCU enrolls only 11.2% of its students from out of state, and out-of-staters account for only 25.7% of tuition revenue. VCU and other universities in a comparable situation have less pricing flexibility as a result.
— JAB
