Sewanee, Liberal Arts College in Tennessee, Cutting Tuition by 10 Percent

Here's one change in higher education that parents and students can get behind.

Sewanee: The University of the South, announced that it will be dropping its $46,000 price of tuition next year by 10 percent, effectively bucking a trend of yearly 4 to 5 percent price hikes at private colleges. The university is making the change to better compete with cheaper public schools and other private schools that will likely continue to raise their price tags, The New York Times reports.

"Higher education is on the verge of pricing itself beyond the reach of more and more families," Vice Chancellor John McCardell said in a statement. "The reduction in tuition at Sewanee recognizes today's new economic realities and the pressures that families face."

Applications to the small liberal arts college in Tennessee have grown in years past. However, of those students who were accepted, the number choosing to go to Sewanee has decreased to 24 percent, the lowest it has been in 10 years. The school received more than 3,000 applications this year and expects to enroll 425 freshman for the 2011-12 academic year.

The tuition decrease will amount to $4,600 per student, which will lower the annual cost to $41,400, including room and board. The decrease will reduce the school's income by about $6 million to $8 million over the next three years.

The price of higher education has continued to climb even as the economy has tanked. The title of most expensive school in the country this year goes to Sarah Lawrence College in New York, which costs students $57,556 a year, including tuition and room and board, according to Forbes. (Second on the list was Columbia University, followed by Bard College, Wesleyan University, Vanderbilt University, University of Chicago, Harvey Mudd College, Trinity College, Georgetown University and Bates College.)

Forbes notes that of the top 10 most expensive schools, only four also appear on its list of best American colleges.

But Michael Tomasky of The Guardian points out that the price of a college education is less a problem than the fact that it's impossible to discern whether students are getting what they pay for. Colleges and universities are ranked according to "research grants, their physical plant, any number of things. But they're not ranked according to how well they teach, because no one knows."