"So much of it has to do with the personal attention students get, " says Tony Pals, a spokesman for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

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If not the first, Sewanee is the largest private school to institute such price cuts in recent years, said Tony Pals, director of communications for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

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The authors of the book, Bert Sperling and Peter Sander , collected the number of two- and four-year colleges and the number of universities with selective admissions from the National Center for Education Statistics and Princeton Review, respectively.

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However, the compounding costs from an incomplete education shows up in lost wages for employees, remedial training among colleges and universities, and even our aggregate growth rates for the national economy.

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The announcement comes about six years after anonymous donors gained national attention for creating Kalamazoo Promise, an organization that covers tuition costs at state colleges and universities for graduates of Kalamazoo public high schools.

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The mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor Angel Taveras, made national headlines last week when details emerged about his plan to tax nine tax-exempt hospitals, colleges and universities in an effort to raise revenue.

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