In May, the president and officers of the university will talk numbers with the board of trustees. That is when the trustees approve school budgets and the tuitions we charge our customers. Tufts is not a business, but we need to be business-like. One of the things businesses do is to look at their markets. They want to know where their next customer is coming from.
Universities do that too.
Without students we're out of business. So the schools of Tufts University are continually looking at their own markets. May. Our schools compare themselves to schools of their own kind, i.e., prestigious schools with high tuitions. And higher still when you consider that in general the schools we compete with are far more generously endowed than we are and give large scholarships to offset tuition. It means that everything we do must be of the highest quality, making those tuitions worth it.