I read the article, and was struck that GWU is now considered a national research university. I too remember it as a commuter school as the article stated it once was.
It's well known that all private schools that aspire to national stature have roughly the same sticker price. And given that GWU is making efforts to rise in the rankings (for whatever that is worth), it certainly seems a better value than say Bennington, a middling liberal arts school that I remember only because it had the highest sticker price in the country when I was applying to college many years ago. Even today, Bennington and GWU have about the same tuition, but Bennington's acceptance rate is 65% to GWU's 34%.
GWU can try to charge whatever it wants, but the only people that will pay that much are students from wealthy families that don't have any better choices.
They mention BU as the model for GWU in that story. As a Boston area resident, I think that a talented student can learn just as much at BU as they could at MIT for example, but that MIT's main value is a richer intellectual environment and better career opportunities. There are several kids from our high school each year that turn down full scholarships from BU each year and instead go to an Ivy, MIT, or a Carnegie-Mellon. So truly talented students won't pay anything near the sticker price, and may end up paying nothing for a fine education if they so choose.
