In the tuition-discounting report it released last week, the National Association of College and University Business Officers presented a troubling picture.

The discount rate, which measures how much of colleges’ gross tuition and fees is given back to students as aid, has been going up among the private, nonprofit colleges responding to the group’s survey. At the same time, more than half of the colleges had decreased or flat freshman enrollment. The data, the report says, suggest that discounting “is no longer working effectively at a large number of colleges and universities.”

That’s certainly a sobering thought for the large number of private colleges relying on a high-price, high-discount pricing model. But is it the full story?

Kathy Kurz doesn’t think so. She wrote a response to the report on a blog run by Scannell & Kurz, the higher-education consulting firm, where she…

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Easton, Pa. — Demand for higher education is up, but so, too, are college costs. The returns on investing in a bachelor’s degree have grown, yet net prices, for many families, have increased relative to their incomes. Put another way, it’s both an exciting and nerve-racking time to lead a postsecondary institution, especially a residential liberal-arts college with a big price tag.

On Tuesday morning, Catharine Bond Hill, president of Vassar College, shared her view of the economic challenges that face public and private colleges, and the students they serve, during an era of dwindling financial support from states. “Whether we like it or not, families are going to have to bear more of the costs of higher education,” she said. “We have now entered a second-best world, and I think we’re going to be there quite a while.”

Ms. Hill spoke here on the second day of a conference…

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Easton, Pa.—On Monday morning, a group of accepted applicants heard Daniel H. Weiss, president of Lafayette College, describe the virtues of residential liberal-arts institutions. He spoke of his college’s commitment to teaching, of its power to prepare students for both work and life.

Hours later, in the same auditorium, dozens of college presidents and provosts heard Mr. Weiss deliver a sobering talk about the challenges facing institutions like Lafayette. “We are surrounded by changes whether we embrace them or not,” he said. “The market is happening to us.”

Mr. Weiss’s remarks came during a wide-ranging speech that opened a three-day conference—called “The Future of the Liberal Arts College in America and Its Leadership Role in Education Around the World”—sponsored by Lafayette and Swarthmore Colleges. The conference, which has attracted institutional…

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It’s April, and high-school seniors are in the thick of considering which of the colleges that have accepted them to attend. Brian Rosenberg has a message for those students who are making up their minds about Macalester College, where he is the president.

In a video on the college’s Web site, Mr. Rosenberg says he understands that price is an important consideration as students choose a college. One imagines it’s a topic he hears a lot of concern about, given that Macalester’s comprehensive fee (which includes room and board) is more than $50,000. But student should also consider value, Mr. Rosenberg says–what they get for their money at a particular college.

“We do everything we can to make Macalester affordable and accessible to an economically diverse group of students,” Mr. Rosenberg says. “But it’s important to remember that you have the opportunity to make this choice only …

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A savvy enrollment manager once told me that a crucial part of his job was getting his college’s name in newspapers and magazines. After all, he said, the more people see an institution’s name, the more familiar it becomes, and the more attractive it seems to prospective students.

He was describing “buzz,” something most colleges crave. In case you didn’t know, the Global Language Monitor will measure it for you.

A media analytics company based in Austin, Global Language Monitor tracks the frequency of words and phrases on the Internet. The company’s “TrendTopper MediaBuzz Rankings,” according to a news release, “measure near real-time movements of an institution’s reputation or ‘brand equity,’ using the same techniques used to measure the appeal of any other branded product, such as luxury automobiles, or consumer electronics.”

So if your alma mater’s name appears in a news…

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Philadelphia—Enrollment managers increasingly rely on transfer students to help meet their colleges’ goals. But transfer students often have different expectations and needs than traditional freshmen do. With that in mind, some colleges have separate admissions counselors to work exclusively with transfers, while others cross-train their staffs to work with both populations.

The merits and drawbacks of each approach were discussed during a session at the annual meeting of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Counselors here on Monday.

Iowa Wesleyan College used to have a traditional recruiting model, with four counselors for first-year students who traveled to different parts of the country and one transfer-student counselor, said Julie Fopma, associate director of admissions. But there were problems with this model, she said. The workload varied from …

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Michael V. Reilly will become the new executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, known as Aacrao, in June.

Mr. Reilly, who until recently was executive director of the Council of Presidents, in Washington State, shared his thoughts on how Aacrao can support its members during challenging times shortly before the group’s annual meeting, in Philadelphia.

Q. What about working for Aacrao appealed to you?

A. I was an admissions director and an enrollment person for many years, and Aacrao was very important to me in my professional development. When I moved into the public-policy arena about four years ago, coming to the Council of Presidents, I really enjoyed this work. So the real excitement for me about Aacrao was the ability to blend those two interests, the professional arena of enrollment and admissions and registration…

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High-school students will soon have to upload photos of themselves when they register for ACT and SAT exams. The image will be printed on each test taker’s admissions ticket, which will then be checked against the photo IDs they present at testing centers.

The new policy is just one of several “test security” enhancements that ACT Inc. and the College Board announced on Tuesday. The changes arose from last year’s cheating scandal in Nassau County, N.Y., where more than 50 students were found to have either impersonated someone else and taken the ACT or SAT for that person, or paid another student to take the test for them. An investigation of the cheating led by Nassau County’s district attorney, Kathleen M. Rice, led to the arrest of 20 teenagers.

“These reforms close a gaping hole in standardized-test security that allowed students to cheat and steal admissions offers and…

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