St. Thomas’ enrollment and tuition numbers have remained steady this fall, despite Concordia University-St. Paul drawing a 65 percent increase in new students with its $10,000 tuition reduction.

Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Kris Roach said Concordia isn’t a direct competitor for students who apply to St. Thomas.

“I don’t think I could look at our new enrolled students and say that we won or we lost any students to Concordia-St. Paul,” Roach said. “They haven’t historically been a school that we overlap with a lot.”

Just three miles from St. Thomas, Concordia re-evaluated the money it was spending on financial aid through grants and scholarships, which led to the tuition cut.

Mark Vangsgard, St. Thomas’ vice president for business affairs and chief financial officer, said increasing the number of incoming students is not a huge priority for the university since it is at capacity for undergraduate students.

“We believe, based on the fact that we are full, that students find value in that level of excellence and therefore are willing to pay the price that we need to charge to maintain those areas of excellence,” Vangsgard said.

According to Roach, the university’s board of trustees, the president and the chief financial officer make the final decisions regarding tuition.

Vangsgard said he doesn’t think Concordia’s decision puts any additional pressure on St. Thomas to make a similar move. Instead, the pressure comes from the board of trustees.

“Our board of trustees gives us continual pressure on being efficient, on being productive as an institution, on minimizing and increasing tuition rates to the lowest practical level,” Vangsgard said.

Freshman Gabby Schiller said she saw a St. Thomas education as something unique. Even with the tuition decrease, Concordia was not on her radar.

“I wasn’t looking at Concordia to begin with,” Schiller said. “There are just things about St. Thomas that are just unparallel to other schools.”

Senior Mark Painter said Concordia’s tuition drop could affect the St. Thomas community.

“I think it will have a big impact. When (people) are looking at colleges, finance is a big part of it,” Painter said. “I love St. Thomas, but if I was unsure or didn’t feel too attached to the St. Thomas community, I would definitely think about switching if the school was that much cheaper.”

For Junior Ella McGarthwaite, the campus’ signature look attracts a certain kind of student, and she thinks it will continue to do so.

“I think a lot of it is the aesthetic of St. Thomas. You kind of like St. Thomas for that reason, and I think some people might still go here for that,” McGarthwaite said.

Roach said each college approaches the tuition-cost situation differently.

“As you can imagine, during the Great Recession that we have just gone through, colleges had to be very nimble … trying to get students from other places to come to their institutions or doing something as dramatic as Concordia has done,” Roach said.

This kind of dramatic change has consequences that many don’t necessarily see, she said.

“This is a labor-intensive industry. You have to pay faculty; you have to have technology, lights, food on campus,” Roach said. “It all takes a lot of money, so if you are going to dramatically cut your revenue, you’ll probably have to change some place else.”

Johnnay Leenay can be reached at leen1980@stthomas.edu.