As March Madness gets ready to tip off, I received an additional Net Price Madness entry from Justin Chase Brown, associate director of student financial aid at the University of Missouri-Columbia. (His bracket is shared with permission, and I appreciate his willingness to share!) He included three different specifications, considering the percentage change in net price between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years:
(1) Largest percentage change in net price, not allowing teams seeded 13th or lower to advance.
(2) Smallest percentage change in net price, not allowing teams seeded 13th or lower to advance.
(3) Smallest percentage change in net price, regardless of seed.
His brackets can be found in this spreadsheet, and a picture of the third bracket is below:
Justin’s bracket has Florida “winning” the prize for the largest percentage change in net price (18%) over George Washington, Oregon, and Arizona State. Harvard wins for the smallest percentage change in net price (-21%)—although it should be noted that not a lot of students actually qualify in the net price cohort and their endowment is large enough to provide free college for all admitted students. Stanford, BYU, Mercer, and Kansas State also make the Final Four in at least one of the brackets.
More ways to pick your bracket based on higher education data can be found in Jonah Newman’s summary in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which also links to my original Net Price Madness piece.
Robert Kelchen 