5 Questions for Arthur Levine on the Real Price of College

In about 10 minutes, anyone can find out exactly how much it would cost them to study at Brandeis University—including their tuition, room, board and any discounts from merit and financial aid. The institution recently launched Faye (a play on “FA,” for financial aid), an AI-powered tool that will tell prospective students the real price to attend after they enter their financial information, academic transcripts and test scores. The tool goes a step beyond other net price estimators by giving students an all-but-guaranteed price of attendance (once accepted, their financial and academic information will be verified) and could, Brandeis leaders hope, change the game around cost confusion in higher ed. 

With exorbitant sticker prices and double-digit tuition discounts, colleges have come under increased criticism about the lack of transparency about what students pay to attend their institutions. Lawmakers and prospective students are pressuring them to provide more clarity. A recent survey of students, parents and the general public by the Strada Education Foundation found that confusion around the cost of attending a college sows skepticism about institutions—76 percent of respondents said that colleges with a “very confusing” financial aid process “care more about making money than educating students.” Nearly half (49 percent) said the same about colleges with a “straightforward” process.

While colleges have tried to address the issue of transparency with tuition guarantees, free-tuition income thresholds, instant price estimators or a commitment to the College Cost Transparency Initiative, none of these have gone as far as giving students the price they will pay on day one. In a recent conversation with Inside Higher Ed over Zoom, Arthur Levine, the president of Brandeis University and the former president of Bradford College and of Teachers College at Columbia University, said higher ed should be no different from other industries in showing their prices. With platforms like Faye, institutions will be encouraged to provide that predictable pricing, he said. “If I have the capacity to tell people this truth, why do I want to pretend that I don’t?”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

1. Why did you decide to invest in a tool like Faye?

I’m the child of a dad who never finished high school, and had it not been for financial aid, I couldn’t have gone to Brandeis. One of the things I wanted to show was that it’s possible for anybody with ability and any income to attend Brandeis. But more than that, what I wanted to show was that at a time in which colleges are being criticized broadly for their pricing and lack of transparency, I realized we could make it transparent. We could show people what they would really get. Other industries are forced to do that. I don’t know why higher education isn’t. We thought if we could do this and make it work, we could encourage other institutions to adopt similar practices.

2. What do you hope changes in higher ed now that Faye is out in the world?

What I’d say is there are three broad criticisms of higher education. The first one is cost and transparency. The second is that our curriculums are aged and don’t fit the times as well as they once probably did, and the third is that colleges and universities are very slow to change. We had already responded to two and three. We had redesigned our entire curriculum and sought to reinvent the liberal arts, and we did the discussions and the votes for approval in the first five months after I arrived at Brandeis, so in essence we’ve answered all three of the criticisms of modern higher ed.

3. Why do you think it’s so hard for colleges to offer the cost transparency students and their families need?

It was really hard for us to develop Faye. Fortunately, John Katzman and Noodle were really eager to try this. When we looked at it and thought about it, we said, “We can’t do this, that won’t work,” and the first few attempts were wildly off the mark in terms of what the financial aid would be. But we were determined to get it right, and I was really lucky I had this incredible person in enrollment management, Jennifer Walker. She has an extraordinary team, and toward the end of this, they were going 24-7 trying to create Faye. We just thought it was so, so very important. Universities need to be trusted, and this was the essential part of gaining that trust.

Offering merit discounts as a recruitment tool seems a little sleazy to me. Faye does merit packages, too. We’re not saying that here’s where you’re getting need-based, we’re saying this is the whole package. We wanted to say, “Here’s the price that you pay.” If we could do it, we should do it. And yes, there were challenges. I essentially asked my board to set tuition two years from now. Colleges don’t do that.

I’ve spent much of my career writing about equity and about the capacity of low-income students to attend college and university. When I got to Brandeis, one of the first questions I asked was “What would happen if we cut our tuition by a third?” We went to several people who are experts in financial aid, and they said, “Where do you want to put your for-sale sign?” The answer being, and I don’t like this answer, but there’s nothing I can do about this one. Imagine if Tiffany’s had a half-price sale. Would you think, “Gosh, that’s Tiffany doing a public service” or would you think, “They must be in serious trouble?” So I thought, if I can’t cut my price, and I want to identify the group of colleges that we’re part of, which charge the same kinds of prices we do, the best thing I could do was tell every student, “Here’s exactly what you’re going to pay.”

4. A recent report from Strada showed strong links between confusion around the cost of college and the loss of trust in higher ed. How could providing more transparency around the cost of college, like you’re trying to do, help rebuild trust in universities and colleges?

I think the lack of transparency sounds like flimflam, which is to say that you won’t tell me because you want to take me for as much as I’m worth. You won’t tell me when you could. If I have the capacity to tell people this truth, why do I want to pretend that I don’t? The lack of transparency and the high cost are two of the reasons that trust has declined. If I could diminish both of those realities by telling the truth, why would I not want to do that?

We’re living in an age in which higher education is being held up to extraordinary criticism, in which the kinds of actions the government is taking, if done by another power, would be considered an act of war. We need to build higher education—our future depends upon it, and we can’t have the kinds of distractions that go with the current criticisms, particularly if we can overcome them.

5. Lawmakers—both federal and state—have introduced legislation that would mandate greater cross-transparency around things like standardizing student aid award letters or publicly displaying the cost of course materials. How do you think greater government involvement would change the game in cost transparency for colleges and students?

It would be a pity if the reason that higher education decides to become more transparent was because government forced them to do that. That’s not a way in which you build faith in your institution or trust in our colleges and universities. As a result, I think it’s sad that they have to do that, that they feel a responsibility to do it, and that colleges forced them into it if they had to do it.