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NY Times  2006/12/13

In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises With Price
COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. ¡ª John Strassburger, the president of Ursinus College, a small liberal 
arts institution here in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, vividly remembers the day 
that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants
because of its tuition. 

It was too low.

So early in 2000 the board voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 
(and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then
it waited to see what would happen.

Ursinus received nearly 200 more applications than the year before. Within four years 
the size of the freshman class had risen  35 percent, to 454 students. Applicants had
apparently concluded that if the college cost more, it must be better.

¡°It¡¯s bizarre and it¡¯s embarrassing, but it¡¯s probably true,¡± Dr. Strassburger said. 

Ursinus also did something more: it raised student aid by nearly 20 percent, to just 
under $12.9 million,meaning that a majority of its students paid less than half price.

The recognition that families associate price with quality, and that a tuition rise, 
accompanied by discounts, can lure more applicants and revenue, has helped produce 
an economy in academe something like that in the health care system, with prices 
rising faster than inflation but with many consumers paying less than full price.