St. John's touts making college more affordable following tuition cut

Dec. 28—St. John's College's student center buzzed on the evening of Dec. 13.

Johnnies warmed up their voices, some in seemingly matching outfits or with acoustic guitars strapped around their shoulders. Others found their seats in the Great Hall, snacking on collegiate kryptonite — free food. The liberal arts college's end-of-semester tradition Collegium, an opportunity for students, staff and faculty to demonstrate their skills in talent-show-style performances, was about to begin.

Maebh Hurley, a fourth-year St. John's student from Texas, danced through a rehearsal room near the Great Hall. She glided across the carpeted floor in a leotard and pair of sweatpants, pointed lines of white eyeliner striping her eyelids.

Hurley has spent her college years working two jobs — one on campus, one off. As a full-time student, she worked 10 to 14 hours per week, which increased to 16 to 18 hours per week during the all-online initial years of the coronavirus pandemic. When she went part-time at St. John's this school year, the number ballooned to about 20 to 25 hours per week.

The hectic schedule — combined with contributions from family and merit-based aid — meant she'll be able to graduate without shouldering student loan debt. Barely.

"It's been OK for me. It's been exhausting, but it's been reasonable," Hurley said of her efforts to graduate from St. John's without taking out loans.

For recent St. John's graduates and those still in the midst of their college years, the school's much-ballyhooed decision to significantly cut tuition four years ago made higher education a much more attractive — and accessible — possibility. Now, college officials say, the student body is becoming increasingly socioeconomically diverse, with more middle- and lower-income students enrolling in the centuries-old institution.

"This was a necessary thing ... to signal to the world our affordability and to actually make ourselves more affordable to students who would have loved this college and yet felt they couldn't come," St. John's Vice President of Admissions Ben Baum said of the college's tuition reset four years ago.

In 2018, St. John's, which has campuses in Santa Fe and Annapolis, Md., reduced its tuition from more than $52,000 to $35,000 per year. The price cut stemmed from persistent concerns from alumni, who said St. John's "sticker price" of more than $50,000 per year in tuition costs alone didn't sound affordable for their own children, Baum said.

Around the time of the reduction, the college also implemented a special scholarship for New Mexico residents, offering in-state students an additional $10,000 discount and bringing their total tuition costs to about $25,000.

In the years since the decrease was implemented, as other colleges and universities have hiked tuition despite all-online instruction and widespread financial problems caused by the pandemic, St. John's tuition has remained surprisingly stable. After three years of tuition capped at $35,000, the college implemented a 3 percent increase last year — bringing the annual bill to $36,040. For New Mexico students, the increase was offset by a matching increase in the college's scholarship, allowing the cost to remain at $25,000.

Though many are grateful for any reduction in tuition, students like Hurley have no illusions that they'll get their degrees on the cheap.

"It's college in America. It's expensive," said junior Andrew Wissman as he wrote an end-of-semester essay during the Collegium concert.

But Baum said the tuition reduction does seem to be producing the desired impact: St. John's is starting to attract more middle- and lower-income students, in part due to a two-part process that cut tuition while also expanding its need-based financial aid programs.

While tuition costs decreased by nearly $20,000 starting in the 2019-20 school year, St. John's cost of attendance — or the full-freight cost of a year of college, including tuition, room, board and fees — remained high at nearly $52,000. Baum said that's a nearly impossible figure for most students.

"The reality is that, even after lowering our tuition, we are still expensive. Most American families can't afford to spend $50,000 a year on college. That is why our need-based financial aid is such an important piece of what we do," Baum said.

With that as prologue, the college committed to ensuring the cost of attendance was attainable through need- and merit-based financial aid, Baum said. Financial aid slices the cost of attendance by about half, with students paying an average of $24,000 per year after aid — although Baum added many students will pay more or less than that average.

For New Mexico students, that cost of attendance number dips even lower, to an average of about $10,500 per year, due to the special scholarship available to in-state students.

Several St. John's students said their experiences obtaining financial aid through the college were largely positive.

Wissman, a Texas native who said he pieces together tuition each semester with a combination of summer job earnings, merit scholarships, need-based financial aid and family contributions, said the financial aid office at St. John's was receptive to his needs. When he called the office to request a second review of his initial financial aid package — which included no need-based assistance — it responded, and he was offered need-based aid, after all.

"I think the school tries really hard to make sure that it is, in a lot of ways, accessible for whoever," Wissman said. "We're a smaller campus; we don't have a huge endowment or anything. But somehow they figure things out."

In addition to decreasing tuition and expanding financial aid offerings, campus officials also sought to communicate the college's affordability, largely to the benefit of lower-income students, Baum said. St. John's produced publications and a better website on costs, and its recruitment teams now visit schools with predominantly lower-income students, explaining how financial aid would make the college accessible to them.

"We really have honed our message that St. John's is a place that should be affordable for students no matter what their background is, regardless of what that sticker price is," Baum said.

McKenna Omoruyi, a sophomore from Arizona, said the college's willingness to problem-solve in financing her education was one of the reasons she chose to attend St. John's.

Omoruyi is among the first in her family to attend college, and higher education didn't always seem accessible to her. St. John's financial aid officials helped guide her through the complex financial aid process, opening the door to higher education.

"It wasn't particularly a clear option for me. I really had to find ways to get to where I am now," Omoruyi said.

Officials say the changes had the desired impact at St. John's: nearly a quarter of this year's freshman class are federal Pell grant recipients, or students with "exceptional financial need," Baum said.

To make the tuition decrease sustainable long-term, Baum said St. John's paired the tuition reduction with an ongoing $300 million capital campaign. The effort's direct connection to the college's accessibility goals pushed many alumni to give.

Today, the campaign has surpassed its initial goal, with a year left to continue raising funds.

Salomon Cordova, a native New Mexican and 2022 alum who now works as a content writer for the college, said St. John's often seemed out-of-reach to many of his friends in Albuquerque prior to the tuition decrease. Interested students would see the sticker price of more than $50,000 in tuition and look no further, he said.

"St. John's is undergoing a lot of changes," Cordova said. "And I think the tuition reduction tells a part of that story, of an openness and willingness to address stopgaps for a more diverse student body."

At Collegium, students didn't doubt the value of their education as they celebrated the end of another semester, clapping and shouting with the same gusto for a classical funeral march as a folk song performance. Without hesitation, Hurley, Wissman, Omoruyi and Cordova said the cost was worth it for the education they'd received at St. John's.

"St. John's is, I think, really good with making sure that students get what they need, when they need it," Omoruyi said. "I know that's true for me."