Photo by Nakiya Melroy
In August, Anderson University announced a tuition freeze for the 2026-2027 academic year, marking one of the many new changes President Scott Moats has brought to the campus this semester. This freeze affects all traditional and transfer undergraduate students in and out of the state, for both incoming and returning students in the 2026-2027 term. AU, as a private university, joins all public colleges and universities in Indiana that have collectively announced their own tuition freezes, prompted by Governor Mike Braun and supported by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.
This decision for AU is an effort to make its education more affordable and accessible in a climate of rising tuition costs and the difficulty of making ends meet to afford a private university education.
“The cost of doing business now is more and more expensive for institutions,” said Scott Cagnet, the AU vice president for admissions and athletics, “But there reaches a point where institutions have a responsibility for finding ways to not pass those costs off to the students, but to be good stewards of what we’ve been given.”
AU, after doing a financial modeling of this decision, anticipates that it will make a more viable option for returning students and an attractive feature for prospective and incoming students considering a private institution. “We think that it will provide a boost in our retention and garner attention and goodwill that will, hopefully, lead to more students entrusting their education to Anderson University,” Cagnet said.
The announcement of the tuition freeze was interesting for returning students, though there were a few doubts about the nature of the decision.
“I have a concern for how they’re going to offset the balance of the tuition freeze,” said Kadisha Smith, a sophomore at AU in psychology and youth ministries, “The fees are already a lot. How far do they think it is going to climb after this freeze?”
“I am roughly aware of how pricing works for tuition, housing, scholarships, and so on,” said Elili Sutton, the current president of the Student Government Association, “I’m curious to see how it would affect the costs of other aspects like housing, meal plans, and scholarships.”
According to Cagnet, the answers to these questions are a bit complex. For returning students, there will be no changes to their scholarships unless they do not meet the requirements of keeping that scholarship, and those requirements remain the same. For incoming students in the fall of 2026, there are changes that have been made for scholarships offered, but this doesn’t apply for returning students; there have been shifts in scholarship amounts in some areas to increase scholarships in other areas.
As for how the freeze affects other student costs, while the university is reviewing the costs for room and boarding for the coming year, it is usually affected by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), an indicator of inflation, and contractual obligations with the university’s partners. As Cagnet stated, the tuition freeze itself will not impact these other costs.
“This is a good thing,” Smith said, “We see that the school is going through a financial struggle at the moment, but we still appreciate that the students are on their mind.”
Students see this as a step in the right direction to achieving affordability in the current state of higher education, though the impact may differ depending on the financial situation of each student.
“We’re proud of standing alongside our state institutions who are required to make this commitment,” Cagnet said, “We hope and pray that this is helpful to students who otherwise might struggle to make ends meet financially.”