Whitworth University will be slashing its advertised undergraduate tuition rates by more than half next fall.
Despite a sticker price cut of tens of thousands of dollars, the majority of students can expect to be paying the same amount – about $26,900 per year.
Whitworth President Scott McQuilkin said it’s an effort to introduce transparency and a dose of honesty about what students should expect to pay at the private college in north Spokane.
He said private colleges publicize high-tuition costs, but then offer deep discounts in the form of school-based scholarships for students that “in essence have functioned as coupons.”
For instance, an average student enrolls at Whitworth under the $54,000 price tag. Being average, they go on to receive $27,000 in “scholarships” from the school to bring their baseline cost down to around $27,000 without any additional aid. McQuilkin said that he doesn’t know of any students who have paid the full $54,000 figure.
Now, students will owe a straight $26,900 with potential for a four -year scholarship based on their high school grade -point average.
“So rather than a conversation that says, ‘Well sticker price is 55 but there’s gonna be a range – you may end up spending 15,000, you may be 35,000. We have this complicated formula, send us your FAFSA,’ ” McQuilkin said. “And it’s very unclear for parents. This allows us to, in a very brief conversation, say, ‘Here it is. 26-9. You’re a 3.9 (GPA)? 17-9.’ So that’s what’s behind it.”
A student, domestic or international, with no merit-based scholarship that has a room and meal plan can expect to pay $43,000 a year to attend Whitworth without external aid.
As many as 75% of prospective students will rule out an institution with a sticker price of over $40,000, McQuilkin said.
“The fact that there are that many students choosing to not even look at a place when it really is a place that … we can make it possible for them,” he said. “But they’re just choosing not to look at an institution out of hand. We want to remove that barrier, which is an artificial one to begin with.”
The phenomenon of universities pulling tuition prices to match what most students actually pay is called a tuition reset, research director with the National Association of College and University Business Officers Ken Redd said, and around 3% of 286 private colleges surveyed for the 2024-25 school year did it in some capacity.
“That’s a fairly common pricing strategy, it’s not unusual anymore,” Redd said.
Though the idea is often to keep revenue into the university stable when doing a tuition reset, there is a risk of losing revenue by allowing in some students at an average price when they previously would have paid more.
Universities sometimes combat this potential loss by cutting research faculty or dipping into endowments, Redd explained, but oftentimes the hope is that more students will enroll, offsetting any imbalance.
At Whitworth, McQuilkin doesn’t anticipate the university making any more or less per student after the cut. There is the potential, he said, for more students to consider Whitworth more seriously.
“We removed that barrier. We removed that confusion,” he said. “More students might see this as a place for them to attend.”
Colleges across the country have been facing lower enrollment and higher costs, according to education editor for U.S. News LaMont Jones. He oversees publications about trends in higher education including annual national university rankings and said in the face of declining birth rates and a renewed emphasis on the trades leading to fewer college applicants, a tuition reset might lead to higher enrollment and revenue.
“It’s a really bold step that they’ve done, whatever research they needed to do to decide that this is a good step to take,” he said.
In contrast to the nationwide trends Jones described, McQuilkin said Whitworth met all of its enrollment goals this year.
“We’re doing this at a moment when we’ve seen strong numbers,” he said.
Adam Miller, financial aid vice president at Whitman College, said he applauds Whitworth’s move to transparency.
In 2019, Whitman College implemented a financial guarantee system that tells prospective applicants how much aid they would receive if they were admitted based on high school transcript and the FAFSA – what Miller called “our approach to transparency.”
While the sticker price at Whitman sits at around $66,000, Miller said students pay an average of $30,000 to $35,000 after receiving scholarships from the school, with notable exceptions for students from exceptionally low- or high-income families.
Next school year, Whitman will also begin meeting the full demonstrated financial need of incoming students, covering the difference between expected family contribution and tuition to attract more low -income students.
Gonzaga University spokesman Dan Nailen said in an email statement that while he can’t comment on Whitworth’s tuition, “98% of our undergraduate students receive financial aid.”
The tuition for the 2025-26 academic year at GU sits at $56,140 per year, according to their website.
Nailen said, “every student and every situation is unique, and we strive to work with each one of our students to assure their academic success.”
While the $26,900 figure is not intended to be held constant at Whitworth, percentage-based increases to account for inflation will be substantially less than they would be for a tuition of over $50,000.
McQuilkin said that the school will be able to “moderate those increases well in the future.”
“It’s for clarity and transparency for families,” he said. “To remove the barriers to make this more accessible for students.”
