Bigger Bills Leave Student Finances Strained
Ryleigh Johnson | Nov. 18, 2025
Poster in the Warren Wilson College (WWC) Financial Aid Office in Swannanoa, N.C. (Echo/Emma Taylor McCallum)
In 2024, Warren Wilson College (WWC) announced that it would be reducing the sticker price of its tuition from $41,500 to $25,500 for the 2025-2026 school year and beyond. Despite this reduction, many students saw an increase to their bill for the fall semester of 2025, leading to confusion and, for some, significant financial hardship.
Returning WWC students were warned to not expect a significant reduction in the amount they would pay to attend the college. In an email sent to students on Sept. 17, 2024, the financial aid office wrote, “[The reduction] does not mean you will be paying $16,000 less tuition next year. The amount of financial aid assistance you receive from the College will be adjusted in line with the lower tuition. You and other returning students should expect to pay the same net tuition price next year you would have paid had there been no change to tuition because scholarships, financial aid and other awards are being adjusted in line with the new lower tuition. For most students, that will mean a $1,250 increase over what they are paying in 2024-25. Some students will see overall savings in future years because of the repositioning of tuition.”
However, students like Taylah Rice were surprised to find that after the tuition reduction, they owed more money to WWC. When Rice received her bill for the fall semester in July 2025, she was shocked to find that her cost to attend WWC had increased by several thousand dollars. Rice had meticulously kept records of how much she paid to WWC each year and realized that the school had dissolved a grant that she had been promised for all four years.
“I had pulled up my [bill for] last semester and this semester, and went through and was like, ‘I'm missing a grant; that's odd,’” Rice said.
Rice had originally received the grant before the beginning of her freshman year, when she realized that she would not be able to afford WWC unless she received additional financial assistance. She was not notified that she had lost the grant prior to receiving her fall 2025 bill. After realizing that she was missing the grant, she reached out to the financial aid office, who then failed to respond to her email for weeks.
“I was looking at the facts,” Rice said. “I'm a rising junior. I have a good academic standing. I have good standing with the work program...I was like, ‘Okay, maybe they'll take that into account.’ We know there's a high dropout/turnover rate. Maybe they want to take care of the students that they do have who want to stay and graduate here. I had said that in [my first] email [to Financial Aid], that I do want to graduate here. In my next email, I was like, ‘Look, I can't afford [the increased cost], but I do want to graduate.’”
When the financial aid office did respond to Rice, it was with bad news.
“Essentially, they were like, ‘There's not anything we can do,’” Rice said. “I remember that they specifically said to me, ‘We don't have the funds to allocate to just anybody.’”
For the next several weeks, Rice traded emails with both student accounts and the financial aid office, hoping that they would find a way to restore her grant. When it became apparent that the school was not able to fill the financial gap that revoking the grant had left, Rice was left without many options.
“They waited until the day most transfer applications for other schools close to email me back, being like, ‘There's nothing we can do,’” Rice said.
Unable to afford attending WWC and without time to apply to transfer to another college, Rice made the difficult decision to drop out.
Rice was not the only student who faced difficulties communicating with the financial aid office. Sophomore Maiia Emadi was also left scrambling to understand why her bill increased while trying to get into contact with financial aid this summer.
“I kept checking [my bill, and] it was still somewhere around $20,000,” Emadi said. “Last year, I was paying $5,000 to $7,000, so it was a huge increase. I even got an email last year that showed my estimated price for tuition this year, and it was $0. All I pay for is really [room and] board, because I am covered through NC Free. I was like, ‘Where did the $20,000 come from?’”
Emadi emailed the financial aid office, who suggested that once her Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) was processed, her bill would be lowered. Emadi kept tabs on her bill throughout the beginning of the summer, growing worried when it did not decrease. She then emailed the financial aid office again, receiving no response.
“Some of my friends who were on campus during the summer told me, ‘They have to see you in person, if they don't, they're not gonna help you,’” Emadi said. “That’s crazy, but they were telling me that was my only option. So I walked into [the financial aid office] and I asked them. I printed out like, 10 pages of documents showing [that the school] told me my bill was going to be $0.”
The financial aid office informed Emadi that her FAFSA student aid index (SAI) had increased, making her ineligible for the NC Free program that had previously subsidized her tuition. The effects of this increase were worsened by recent changes to Emadi’s family income after her father became disabled, leaving her mother supporting the household with one income.
The financial aid office was able to guide Emadi through the process of filing an appeal to her FAFSA which would account for her father’s disability. Though the appeal resulted in her tuition being lowered from the initial $20,000, she still ended up paying several thousand dollars more than last year.
“I got confirmation that they changed the price [on my bill] again to almost $9,000,” Emadi said. “So, still more [than last year]. At that point I was so scared of not being able to afford the school, [thinking], ‘Maybe they messed up, and then they're gonna increase it more.’ I was just like, ‘Okay, I'll leave it there.’”
Another sophomore, who wished to remain anonymous and will be referred to as M, also experienced a significant increase to her bill following changes to her FAFSA information. This sophomore paid $3,426 per semester for the 2024-2025 school year. Her bill for the fall semester of 2025 was around $7,603, despite her work contract increasing from eight to 16 hours a week.
“I reached out to [financial aid] in June of 2025,” M said. “I said, ‘This year, my tuition has significantly gone up. Could you please help me to understand why that is?’ When I came back to school, I reached out to financial aid [again], and I was like, ‘Can you triple check this? Because I still don't think this is correct.’ They said that it was a really unique situation, and they'd never seen anything like it.”
After M returned to school in August 2025, the financial aid office confirmed that she had been billed correctly. Changes to her family’s reported adjusted gross income had resulted in her SAI going from -1,000 to around 14,000. M double checked her tax information with her father and their family’s financial advisor, who confirmed that her family had reported accurate financial information to the federal government. M is still confused as to why her SAI increased so drastically, as her family did not experience any significant financial changes that would account for such a large difference in her SAI.
“I just kind of need to figure out what the fuck my financial situation is, because I still have no clue,” M said.
The financial aid office was not available for an interview, but did respond via email to a series of questions sent by The Echo.
In response to Rice’s situation, WWC’s Financial Aid and Accounting Office shared that, “The process of adjusting each student’s financial aid [after the tuition reduction] was very time-consuming. To simplify this, we decided to combine all institutional scholarships—such as merit- and need-based awards—into a single scholarship rather than maintaining multiple separate awards and determining individual amounts for each. The total amount of institutional aid remains the same as it would have been if the scholarships were listed separately. In other words, students’ previous scholarships were reduced in accordance with their tuition reduction but were not dissolved, and students’ WWC Scholarship is where institutional aid from previous years is reflected. It’s important to note that each student’s financial aid package is unique and depends on multiple factors, including their FAFSA application and individual financial circumstances.”
Emadi’s experiences with the lack of communication from the financial aid office and her surprise $20,000 bill permanently damaged her trust in WWC as an institution.
“My original plan was to graduate a semester early,” Emadi said. “Now I'm trying to graduate a year early to cut the cost for my parents and also get out of this school, because I felt so unsupported, so unheard. I had to wait a month to just fill out a [FAFSA] appeal...I wish I would have gotten a notice [about my bill increasing] sooner, or beforehand. It worries me.”
Rice still feels great disappointment about having to drop out and wishes that the administration had done more to support her and other students facing financial difficulty so that she could continue to attend WWC.
“I don't know the reasons why [I lost my grant],” Rice said. “Maybe they have perfectly good reasons, and I'm just an unfortunate victim. I do think that there are very many people who got [screwed] over, [and that is] especially bad when the whole identity and selling point of the school is actually caring about students.”
Bill increases at WWC occur for a number of reasons, from grants being consolidated to changes in financial information from the federal government. The challenges these increases pose to students like Emadi, Rice and M have been compounded by a lack of communication from the administration, which promised students that the tuition decrease would not significantly impact the cost of their education. While the financial aid office has provided some assistance, students continue to express that this help is insufficient to genuinely answer their questions and address the serious financial issues that they face, leading to some being forced to leave WWC altogether.
Students with questions or concerns about their bill or the effects of the tuition decrease can contact the financial aid office or the college’s provost, Jay Roberts.