Klaus Solko, co-executive editor
According to Augsburg Student Financial Services, tuition for the 2026-27 school year at Augsburg University is $47,600 with an overload fee of $1,488 per credit. This does not include any financial aid or scholarships; however, it also does not include pricing if a student is getting a meal plan or living on campus. Furthermore, it does not include additional fees such as the “student wellness fee” and “green fee” and such; these fees are estimated to total $899 in a year.
For the 2027-28 school year, the sticker price for Concordia University in St. Paul is going to be $21,700 according to Fox 9 KMSP, not including room and board. This price is down by $5,500 compared to this year. The new price will be applied to both incoming and current students.
Dr. Brian Fredrich, Concordia president, is calling this change a “tuition reset,” as he claims: “We’re rewinding tuition back to 2006 prices.”
If Augsburg were to reset its tuition back to what it was in 2006, yearly tuition would be only a little more than Concordia’s next year at $21,960. College Simply has Augsburg tuition prices recorded all the way back to 1989, when it was $8,115. This price has risen at least 2.2%, often more, every year, except for between 2019 and 2020, when it stayed at $39,295, which is still $8,305 cheaper than tuition currently is.
So why is Concordia cutting its prices, and why so much? According to Fredrich, Concordia is not competing with other universities for students; they are competing with students not being able to afford going to college at all. NSLS has reported that 42% of college students stress about their future financial security, and that 59% of students have considered dropping out due to financial stress.
If that statistic were to be applied to Augsburg’s undergraduate full-time student body, it would be 1,520 students. Plus, that number is just an average, and it should be brought up that Augsburg’s tuition price is $2,700 above the nation’s average for private schools, which could suggest that for our students the number with financial stressors is higher.
“College loans have been a big stressor for me. This semester I am doing a payment plan in an attempt to take out less loans, but that [still] feels like a crippling amount of money to be paying out of pocket for college, and it makes me feel like I can’t enjoy my college experience or time in the city,” says Augsburg student, Kaia Anderson.
“College loans have been a big stressor for me. This semester I am doing a payment plan in an attempt to take out less loans, but that [still] feels like a crippling amount of money to be paying out of pocket for college, and it makes me feel like I can’t enjoy my college experience or time in the city.”
Kaia Anderson
Alternatively, Augsburg offers many scholarships that bring student tuition down. However, Fredrich had a comment for that system of pricing too. “We [Concordia] believe that the high tuition, high discount [model] is fundamentally broken.”
Concordia also will not be taking away their merit-based scholarships or any courses and staff. They are dedicated, even with lowering prices, to not making cuts. In fact, Friedrich says the only reason Concordia is able to drop prices is because of the growing number of course offerings.
According to Marina Villeneuve for the Guardian, the public has been experiencing rising skepticism towards the use of a college degree. At the same time, students are getting increasingly less satisfied with their colleges as they watch staff get laid off, programs cut and amenities declining in value. Not helping the problem, President Donald Trump has implemented policies that have cut federal research funding, which is a blow to all colleges and universities, especially private ones.