At Mills, which competes with many high-quality state universities, tuition dropped to $28,765 from $44,765, essentially rewinding the price back to its 2005 level. (That figure does not include room, board, meals and other fees, which generally remain the same when schools cut tuition.)



Utica College studied the issue for 18 months before it enacted its own plan in 2016. The New York college settled on a price it thought prospective students would respond well to, and guaranteed that all returning students would pay at least $1,000 less.

Beyond cutting tuition, the school doubled its marketing budget and made improvements on campus including a $4 million renovation of its dining hall, Utica’s president, Laura Casamento, said.

Three years later, Ms. Casamento, who wrote her doctoral dissertation in education on tuition resets, said she was happy with the results. Utica exceeded its overall targets for net tuition revenue each year; enrolled more students, including a significant rise in transfers; and increased retention. Its students are also graduating with less debt.

“Students and their families were taking institutions off the table based on the sticker price,” Ms. Casamento said. “They didn’t even want to have the aid conversation — and you have to have that conversation to understand the net price.

“We really looked at that long and hard,” she continued, “and that is why we went out to prospective students and families and did a pricing study.”

Not all schools are taking the same approach. Nor are they doing it for the same reasons. St. John’s College decided to rethink its tuition even though its applications were at a record high. Administrators peered 10 years into the future and realized that if tuition continued to rise at a standard 3 percent a year, a St. John’s education would cost $70,000 annually for tuition alone.

Pano Kanelos, president of the college’s Annapolis campus, said that had prompted some existential thinking: “Is that the institution we are? Is that sustainable? And what will happen when we get there?”