Making a Difference: a Private College Education at a Public College Price

Colby-Sawyer College Expands Opportunities with New $17,500 Tuition

At Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., which combines a rich liberal arts and sciences education with pre-professional preparation and required internships, students are encouraged to make a difference and discover their potential to build a better world. Holding itself to the same standard, Colby-Sawyer is excited to announce it is taking a major step toward building a better, more accessible college by guaranteeing that all four-year undergraduate students will start with a lower tuition of $17,500 beginning fall 2023.

For decades, Colby-Sawyer has worked to ensure that students and families do not bear the burden of the full cost of tuition — 100 percent of currently enrolled students receive financial assistance — but that’s not always clear to prospective students because the current published tuition is $46,364. After years of strategic planning and decisive action to strengthen the college’s financial stability by establishing new programs, deepening key partnerships and achieving a record level of giving, Colby-Sawyer is reducing its tuition by 62 percent.

The new $17,500 annual tuition makes Colby-Sawyer one of the most affordable private colleges in the region, with a cost comparable to that of enrolling at a public institution.

“Our posted tuition price has caused some families to believe that our individualized educational experience, small classes, experiential learning, required internships and Capstone projects, and preparation for purposeful careers and graduate studies would be out of their reach financially,” Colby-Sawyer College President Susan D. Stuebner said. “However, our institution is enhanced by having students with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. By guaranteeing a new, lower tuition of $17,500, we want to make it clear that a Colby-Sawyer experience is possible for any student who wants to call us home.”

Colby-Sawyer’s cohesive educational experience helps students find their voices, develop their passions and become active learners and confident scholars, artists, writers, scientists, critical thinkers and community leaders. Ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of the 2022 top colleges in the region, it offers undergraduate, graduate and professional studies degrees through its three schools: the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Business & Social Sciences and the School of Nursing & Health Sciences. The college will continue its recent growth in programs by adding a Master of Exercise Science, a Master of Social Work and its first Doctor of Nursing Practice degree in fall 2023.

Since its inception in 1981, the college’s nursing program has held a close partnership with Dartmouth Health. In 2019, Colby-Sawyer and Dartmouth Health launched a five-year project to expand the School of Nursing & Health Sciences, which supports not only undergraduate nursing, master’s level nursing and associate level professional programs, but also provides internships in other fields, such as biology, business and graphic design.

In recent years, the college has significantly increased funding for internships and research opportunities in addition to grant programs funded by the National Science Foundation and the BOLD Women’s Leadership Network, and will continue to invest more than $1 million per year in capital improvements to existing facilities. Colby-Sawyer will break ground on two new buildings in 2023-24: the Charger Athletics Pavilion on the Kelsey Athletic Campus and a state-of-the-art facility for the health sciences in the center of campus.

“We are deeply grateful for the extraordinary generosity of our alumni, donors and friends. They have shown their belief in our stability and in the educational experience we provide with unprecedented levels of giving, including the largest gift in the college’s 184-year history, helping our endowment reach record levels,” Vice President for College Advancement Daniel B. Parish said. “It is because of them that we are now able to guarantee all students will start with a $17,500 tuition, along with continuing to offer further aid, ensuring that generations of students will have the opportunity to explore, connect and make a difference in the world.”

More information about Colby-Sawyer’s transparent tuition and how its expanding opportunities for current and future students can be found at colby-sawyer.edu/reset.

About Colby-Sawyer College

Colby-Sawyer College is a private, residential college located in the heart of the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire. Since 1928, Colby-Sawyer has been providing excellence in higher education through its commitment to a rich liberal arts and sciences education combined with pre-professional academic preparation and required internships in every major.

With a tradition of an individualized educational experience and a 14:1 student-to-faculty ratio, Colby-Sawyer students gain not only essential skills but also the confidence to apply them and the preparation to reach their full potential: 99 percent of 2021 undergraduates are employed or in graduate school; 54 percent of undergraduates were offered jobs at their internship or clinical sites; and, on average, nursing graduates achieved a 99 percent first-time pass rate on the National Council Licensure Examination, compared to 85 percent nationally.