Think Globally, Pay Locally
Pacts allow out-of-state study at in-state prices
Jessica Torch thought she wanted to major in Jewish studies, even before she started applying to colleges. She had attended Jewish schools all her life and actively participated in the Jewish community in the Sandy Springs suburb of her native Atlanta. None of Georgia's state schools, however, offered Jewish studies, and her parents weren't eager to pay out-of-state tuition for the University of Maryland-College Park, where Jessica badly wanted to go. She had almost given up hope of ever studying her dream major at her dream school, when she and her family discovered a practical solution: the Academic Common Market.
The Academic Common Market is a reciprocity agreement among 16 southern states that allows undergraduate and graduate students to enroll at a university in another state while paying in-state tuition. The only caveat: The program of study must not be available in the student's home state. Jessica, now 20 and a junior at Maryland, found out about ACM through a girl from her high school who had participated in it. "If the program is something you're interested in anyway, the common market is a great way to save money," says her mother, Robin Torch, who has another daughter in college, at the University of Georgia. Last school year, the Torches saved more than $12,000 on Jessica's tuition.
Tuition ceiling. Reciprocity agreements have grown in popularity over the past decade. The Midwest Student Exchange Program, similar to ACM, is a consortium of six midwestern states: Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Dakota. Public universities in the exchange can't charge students more than 150 percent of in-state tuition, and private schools offer a 10 percent discount, says Jennifer Dahlquist, director of student initiatives at the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, one of four interstate compacts nationwide. The compact directs the student exchange program, which saves students $2,900 a year on average. Schools and states get involved on a voluntary basis.
Students in the exchanges are happy because they're saving money, and their home states are happy because they're saving money, too, by not maintaining costly programs. But states receiving students may have a different story to tell. Small institutions welcome students (and their money) from other states who fill spaces that otherwise might have remained vacant. Large universities, however, often have enough in-state demand for their programs.
"Many big, prestigious universities, like the University of Colorado-Boulder, don't participate--they have no financial incentive," says David Longanecker, executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The Western Undergraduate Exchange, a tuition-reciprocity agreement among 15 states, falls under his charge. Some colleges, he says, limit their participation in WUE because they can "attract lots of rich kids . . . who are willing to pay an arm and a leg for out-of-state tuition." So, although the number of students in WUE has increased by nearly 50 percent since 2000, the increase would have been even greater if larger institutions, particularly in California, hadn't capped reciprocity enrollment.
Students can choose from hundreds of institutions that do participate in reciprocity agreements, but, says Cara Chervin, another reciprocity student at Maryland, "you have to really be proactive to find out about it." The exchanges aren't widely publicized; the best way to get information is to ask high school counselors or financial-aid advisers at universities. And if your heart is set on an offbeat major like funeral services or wood industries (both offered in the ACM program), then tuition reciprocity may be the best way to save money.
This story appears in the September 5, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.