Virginia Union University will cut the yearly cost of undergraduate tuition by $5,000 beginning next fall in an apparent bid to attract more students and end a quiet, but dramatic two-year drop in enrollment.

The upshot of what amounts to a 32 percent tuition reduction: The private, historically black and Baptist-affiliated university will become the least expensive four-year institution in Richmond and will rank among the lowest-priced public or private four-year institutions of higher education in Virginia, most notably for students from out of state.

The tuition rollback appears to be almost unprecedented among the nation’s colleges and universities, where the norm has been annual tuition increases that outpace inflation.

But with the total number of incoming freshmen and transfer students down by 50 percent and total undergraduate enrollment dropping to the lowest level in decades, VUU appears to have needed a game-changing move.

That came last week on Dec. 24 when Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, chairman of the VUU Board of Trustees, and VUU President Dr. Hakim J. Lucas announced the board’s approval of the rollback in annual tuition to $10,530 for undergraduates beginning with the fall 2020 semester.

The announcement was coupled with a separate announcement that VUU is awarding $250,000 in need-based scholarships to 115 financially struggling students using donations from alumni and corporate and individual donors. The individual awards averaged $2,173.

VUU’s current listed annual tuition is $15,530 for the 2019-20 school year, though most students pay significantly less based on their family income, according to published documents. Students also pay $1,753 in fees, which will remain unchanged.

Including room and board, the total price to attend VUU would drop from around $25,865 a year to less than $21,000 a year, both for Virginia residents and out- of-state students.

Also next year, students will be offered new extended payment options, including five- to six-year payment plans, VUU noted.

When the reduction goes into effect, VUU’s tuition charge of $12,283 including fees would make the school less costly than state-supported Virginia Commonwealth University. This year, VCU is charging full-time, in-state students $14,596 a year in tuition and fees, with the total cost rising to $25,419 when room and board are included.

More significantly, VCU this year is charging non-Virginia residents $35,904 in tuition and fees, and $46,727 including room and board. That’s about $25,000 more than the total charge VUU will impose next year.

The University of Richmond, a Baptist- affiliated school like VUU, listed annual tuition for the 2019-20 school year at $54,690 per undergraduate, with another $12,900 for room and board.

A check of Virginia’s two historically black public universities, Virginia State and Norfolk State universities, shows that both

still would have a slightly lower charge for tuition and fees than VUU would for in-state students, but the price tags would be about equal when room and board are added in.

However, out-of-state students at VSU or NSU would pay at least $10,000 more to attend next year compared with VUU’s projected total for tuition, fees and room and board.

The VUU leaders did not mention the enrollment slump in announcing that tuition was being reduced to a level where it was 10 years ago.

Instead, they highlighted the initiative as supporting VUU’s goal of offering greater access and affordability to a more diverse student body.

“We realize how crippling loan debt has become for students nationwide,” Dr. Lucas stated.

“Students enroll in college seeking a career path that will allow an opportunity for long-term financial stability,” he con- tinued. “However, they end up spending most of their working years paying back student loans.

“Virginia Union is doing what it can,” he noted, “to ensure that students ... have access to an education that will equip them with the tools they need to be successful while avoiding the crippling bill waiting at the other end of graduation.”

The announcement came as the en- rollment slide became more noticeable, according to figures VUU reported to the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

VUU reported undergraduate enrollment of 1,153 students for the 2019-20 school year, the smallest enrollment in the past 27 years, according to annual enrollment data SCHEV posts online that allows a look back to the 1992-93 school year. The last time enrollment approached that low number was in the 1999-2000 school year, when VUU reported 1,172 undergraduates.

In most years, VUU has reported be- tween 1,300 and 1,500 undergraduates. Undergraduate enrollment also slipped below 1,200 undergraduates in the 2018-19 school year, the SCHEV data show.

The drop is most noticeable among first-time undergraduate students.

In the 2018-19 school year, the most recent data SCHEV has posted online, VUU reported 201 such students, or 145 fewer than in the 2017-18 school year when 346 new students were enrolled.

According to the posted SCHEV data, VUU enrolled an average of 481 new students in each of the 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years.

When transfer students are added, the total new enrollment in each of those years averaged 581 students. Including 94 transfers in the 2018-19 school year, the 295 new students represented a 50 percent decline.

It is unclear what impact the tuition cut would have on the discounts that VUU has previously offered.

According to the website Collegesimply.com, VUU provided students with family incomes of less than $110,000 with grant aid that averaged nearly $10,000 a year. The largest discounts, according to the website, were provided to those with family incomes below $48,000 a year.

As part of the tuition overhaul, VUU plans to raise tuition next year for graduate students enrolled in its master’s and doctoral programs, which primarily involve training of ministers. The master’s program tuition will cost $451 per credit hour, an increase of $92, and doctoral program tuition will cost $551 per credit, an increase of $295, VUU stated.

“This was an important decision for the trustees as we work to meet the needs of our students,” Dr. Richardson stated.

“Virginia Union University is a special place where students are nurtured academically and spiritually,” he stated. “This decision will change the future for our current students by reducing and, in some cases, eliminating their student loan debt. It will also give the opportunity to students who may have felt that higher education was financially impossible.”