OPINION:
Last year, the Department of Education issued a clear directive to American colleges and universities: Stop passing your relentless price increases on to students and families.
Higher education had become unaffordable, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said. She asked higher education to rein in its costs.
The response was, predictably, negative.
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Industry leaders claimed that freezing tuition costs was economically impossible. They argued that inflation, operational costs and the need to maintain educational quality meant that tuition had to keep rising.
The overarching creed of higher education is that if an institution stops aggressively raising prices, it will inevitably face declining enrollment and financial ruin.
Yet at Southeastern University, or SEU, we listened to Ms. McMahon’s challenge and responded. We believe the affordability crisis is indeed caused by administrative bloat and that lowering prices will reward an institution that respects a student’s dollar.
So we did exactly what was asked. We froze tuition, maintained a flat financial aid discount rate, engineered our financial models to protect net revenue without gouging families and achieved a 99% financial clearance rate for our students.
The results: Our enrollment did not shrink. We did not sacrifice quality. Instead, we experienced the largest year of growth in our university’s history.
Our fall 2026 census reached an all-time high of 15,136 enrolled students. This may sound like a statistical anomaly, but it is actually the culmination of three consecutive, record-breaking years of growth, representing a massive 43.7% growth in our student body since 2023.
At a time when the national media constantly warn of a “demographic cliff” and shrinking demand for higher education, we have bucked national trends by answering the Education Department’s call.
When you look beneath the surface of our growth, the data dismantles the myth that traditional universities cannot adapt to the modern economy.
Skeptics often assume that rapid institutional expansion is merely padded by part-time, dual-enrollment high schoolers. At SEU, however, our full-time equivalent rose by a staggering 49.3% over the past three years, and our traditional on-campus enrollment grew by 12.5% year-over-year to a record of 2,851 students.
Our momentum proves that Ms. McMahon’s challenge is not only economically viable but also the only sustainable path forward for our industry. The higher education establishment desperately needs to adopt a new philosophy, built on two core principles.
Universities must recognize that, at its core, the affordability crisis is an administrative overhead crisis. You cannot freeze tuition if you continue to expand layers of bureaucratic red tape that add zero value to students’ education.
Instead of funding administrative bloat, universities must aggressively leverage modern technology to drive extreme efficiency. Artificial intelligence, automation and streamlined workflows must be used to shrink the administrative footprint.
When an institution prioritizes operational discipline in the back office, it can protect the students without sacrificing academic rigor.
Higher education needs to stop forcing the consumer to adapt to its outdated models. The institution assumes that students are willing to upend their lives, take on massive debt and conform to a traditional campus setup. Today’s students, however, include working mothers and ambitious high schoolers. They demand a better approach.
By creating more flexible educational models, we can reach more students where they are. In a free market system, expanding access drives volume, and volume creates the sustainable revenue needed to avoid relentless price hikes.
The rest of the higher education establishment must do as the Education Department asked and rein in costs. The alternative is obsolescence. Ms. McMahon’s warning was not merely a bureaucratic suggestion; it was a reflection of severe consumer exhaustion.
The academic establishment claimed that freezing costs would lead to financial ruin. We proved it wrong. By treating our students as valued consumers and respecting their financial investment, we unlocked unprecedented institutional growth.
It is time for the rest of American higher education to accept the challenge.
• Kent Ingle is president of Southeastern University.
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