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A recent court case against Fidelity Investments is interesting, but not for the reasons you might expect.

Ten days ago, Fidelity won its appeal in a whistle-blower case. Two Fidelity employees had claimed, in separate lawsuits, that the firm had retaliated against them for pointing out what they saw as accounting problems with its mutual funds. The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that because Fidelity Investments was not the same legal entity as its funds—it had a contract relationship with them—the two employees were not protected by the Sarbanes-Oxley whistle-blower provisions.

Those protections cover only employees at public companies, and Fidelity is privately held. Newer and broader whistle-blower protections were made part of Dodd-Frank legislation. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor both filed briefs supporting the former employees. The SEC says it is reviewing the decision.

“I’m not surprised the SEC filed an amicus brief,” says Barry Barbash, partner and head of the asset-management group for law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Barbash also served as the SEC’s director of investment management from 1993 to 1998. “The SEC wants to be supportive of whistle-blower functions and would support a broader reading. It recognizes its shortcomings in terms of resources. The court paid no deference to the SEC opinion, but it’s on record.”

Fidelity wouldn’t discuss the case except to say the employee claims had “no merit” and that it has long provided staff with a hotline to report anonymously “potential violations of ethical business practices, laws or regulations.”

But these events happened years ago, and the larger issue here isn’t one of whistle-blowing. It’s the bright legal line the courts are drawing between mutual funds and the companies most investors think they are a part of. Last summer’s Supreme Court decision for Janus was even more startling in this respect. In June, the court ruled in favor of Janus Capital Group (ticker: JNS), effectively saying the parent company wasn’t responsible for misstatements in Janus fund prospectuses, and stockholders of the publicly traded firm weren’t allowed to sue.

In this case as well, the funds were deemed separate legal entities, and neither the parent company nor the subsidiary, Janus Capital Management, were responsible for claims made in multiple prospectuses that the funds had taken steps to prevent market timing, the practice of allowing some institutional customers to rapidly trade a fund at the expense of longer-term shareholders. Janus stockholders said those assurances were assumed to be false when, in 2003, New York’s attorney general filed a complaint against the company, causing its share price to fall. Janus Capital Group agreed to pay $201 million and cut fees by $125 million to settle claims by state and federal regulators, causing a further drop in its stock. But Janus Capital Group stockholders weren’t allowed to sue for losses because, according to the Supreme Court, Janus Capital Group was not responsible for the promises made in Janus funds’ prospectuses.

THESE LEGAL BATTLES SHOULD BE a reminder for investors. While the courts insist the funds are separate legal entities, investors rarely acknowledge that fact. “It would be a distinction without a difference but for the fact the courts have drawn a very sharp distinction,” says Neil Getnick, managing partner at New York law firm Getnick & Getnick. “Now shareholder rights are at issue.”

The problem with this construct, Getnick says, is that it’s a “legal fiction”—a description that came up more than once in conversations on this topic. “It implies the mutual fund is a wholly distinct entity with a separate advisor, when in reality it functions as one unit,” he says.

This raises the question of fund boards. Every mutual fund is required to have a board of directors that meets, in person, at least four times a year. The primary role of fund boards is to negotiate fund fees on behalf of fund shareholders, and keep watch for any potential conflicts of interest at the fund-advisor level, says Susan Ferris Wyderko, president and CEO of the Mutual Fund Directors Forum. The majority of fund boards are made up of so-called independent directors, which means they do not have “any significant business relationship with a mutual fund’s advisor or underwriter.” Many independent directors serve on multiple boards.

Do these boards do enough? “Independent directors play a minority role in most cases,” Getnick says. “They may see something, but that’s putting a lot of responsibility on them.”

What’s more: “The courts have not been that tough on fund boards, either,” says Laura Lutton, editorial director for Morningstar. “Most litigation around fund boards is fee-related. It raises the question as to whether the boards are a good enough watchdog for shareholders.”

But that question we’ll save for another column. 

Money Funds Suffer

Equity funds averaged $5.4 billion in weekly inflows in the four weeks ending Wednesday, according to Lipper. Taxable-bond funds averaged inflows of $7.7 billion and municipal funds $1.2 billion. Money-fund outflows averaged $11.5 billion.

E-mail:
beverly.goodman@barrons.com

By EMILY MALTBY

First there was Black Friday, then Cyber Monday. Now, there’s the second annual Small Business Saturday, when consumers are urged to show support for local retailers by shopping “small” in exchange for a $25 credit provided by sponsor American Express Co. for purchases charged to the card.

But there’s a backlash brewing against this year’s well-hyped event, and some entrepreneurs—such as Sissy Blanchard, owner of Gourmet au Bay, a wine and gift shop in Bodega Bay, Calif.—say they won’t participate.

At issue: the merchants’ newly divided loyalty to a grass-roots movement supporting small businesses known as the 3/50 Project LLC.

The nearly three-year-old group’s mission is to encourage consumers to spend $50 monthly in total at three independent businesses. Based in Minneapolis, its supporters connect primarily through Facebook and other social media. It is funded almost entirely by contributions to its virtual “tip jar” and sales of coffee mugs and T-shirts with messages such as, “Saving the Brick and Mortars Our Nation Is Built On.”

Last year, the organization agreed to ally with American Express for the first Small Business Saturday, according to 3/50 founder Cinda Baxter, who became the official spokeswoman for Small Business Saturday. She declines to say how much she or the organization received from that arrangement.

She says American Express led her to believe it also would provide longer-term funding, though her 2010 contract with the credit-card issuer didn’t include any such agreement.

She says she began to reach out to American Express to discuss funding for a broader variety of small-business projects. But, she says, American Express showed little interest in funding joint projects, aside from Small Business Saturday.

“She did a great job. Her mission aligned nicely with Small Business Saturday,” says Rosa Alfonso, a vice president for public affairs with American Express. “We would have liked her involvement in 2011 as well, but we weren’t able to reach an agreement.”

Ms. Baxter says that after several attempts to negotiate funding for the 3/50 Project, she gave up. Late last summer, when she formally broke off her dealings with the issuer, she posted an essay on the Web, linking to the 3/50 site, setting out her version of the group’s brief relationship with American Express and subsequent breakup.

“They needed to date someone credible from within the circle of influence,” Ms. Baxter wrote, sharing her view of why American Express sought her out. “Someone well-liked by small business owners, with loads of positive press.… Someone highly visible in the pro-local movement who could introduce them to the family, then stand up to Mom and Pop in their defense.”

Her message resonated with a number of small business owners, some of whom already were wary of American Express. During the depth of the credit-crunch, several credit-card companies, including American Express, slashed or pulled lines of credit that the businesses relied on. Some business owners also regard its merchant fees, recently about 2.5%, as too high.

Now, some small-shop owners including California’s Ms. Blanchard are boycotting the Saturday event. “The reason I’m not participating is because it’s not affiliated with the 3/50 Project,” Ms. Blanchard says. For American Express, “it’s a monetary boon if they can get more people to use the card,” she adds. “But there’s been no reciprocal kindness back to the merchants. The 3/50 Project looks out for the interests of the merchants.”

Leah Shelhorn, owner of Studio 41, a gallery and gifts store in Benicia, Calif., came across Ms. Baxter’s essay and now has plans to hand out flyers promoting the 3/50 Project on Saturday. “I wish it had all worked out,” she says. “I wish it had been a happy marriage.”

More than 230 small-business advocacy groups nevertheless are supporting Small Business Saturday this year.

Ms. Alfonso, of American Express, says the issuer offers a number of free tools to help support and increase merchant sales. “It’s not about us. It’s about small businesses,” she says. Small retailers received an estimated 28% sales increase on American Express cards on the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year compared with a year earlier, she says.

Last year, about 10,000 small merchants used the card-issuer’s Facebook ads to promote themselves for the event, American Express says, and so far this year, about 15,000 used the ads. About 100,000 small merchants downloaded promotional signage from its Small Business Saturday website last year.

Lori Webster, owner of Webster’s Fine Stationers LLC in Altadena, Calif., says she was drawn to participate in last year’s event in part because “Cinda brought credibility to it.” She says she hopes to see a small boost in her store’s bottom line from this year’s event, as she did last year, though, “I tend to wince when it’s a small purchase like a greeting card and the customer whips out an American Express card.”

Meanwhile, the 3/50 Project continues with its own holiday promotion. The motto? “Keep the Cheer Here.”

Write to Emily Maltby at emily.maltby@wsj.com

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

The small-business-for-sale marketplace picked up again last year, for the second year in a row, thanks in part to better business performance.

Sales of businesses with roughly $360,000 in annual revenue rose 3.3% in 2011, according to BizBuySell.com, a San Francisco-based online marketplace for small-business acquisitions. The median revenue for small businesses sold last year rose by 6.7%, its data show.

Getty Images

But the median sale price inched up only 3.3% to $155,000, suggesting that it’s still largely a buyer’s market. Sellers are still being “a little bit conservative with their sale price to get things done,” says Curtis Kroeker, a BizBuySell general manager.

Slight improvements in small-business lending conditions could be one factor helping to boost transactions, Mr. Kroeker says. But many sellers are continuing to help finance deals for buyers who are unable to secure sufficient funding otherwise, he adds.

“Everyone’s seeing growth in revenue,” says Tom Gottlieb, managing partner at VR Mergers & Acquisitions LLC, an Austin, Texas brokerage. But he believes that “banks are holding things back from really going well,” adding that “even when the banks are involved, you have to do seller financing in many cases.”

The firm, which mostly handles deals in the $1 million range, closed 15% more transactions in 2011 than it did the year prior, and selling prices were up about 10%, he says.

In healthy economies, seller financing typically accounts for about 20% to 30% of a small-business sale, says Joseph L. Caffrey, president and CEO of Worldwide Business Brokers LLC, a brokerage based in Virginia Beach, Va., with locations throughout the East Coast. But in recent years and still today, sellers are finding that they need to put up as much as 50% to 70%.

“Everybody’s beginning to understand the economy is not going to see a fast turnaround,” Mr. Caffrey says. “This recovery is going be a long slog.”

At Sunbelt of Greater Louisiana, a brokerage serving the Baton Rouge area, sales last year included a few that exceeded $1 million, unlike the year before. The firm managed 33 small-business transactions in 2011, up from 22 in 2010, according to Robert Bourgeois, chief executive officer.

“It’s all a matter of confidence, primarily on the buyer’s part,” he says. “We’re getting brisk activity already.”

BizyBuySell’s Mr. Kroeker believes that the business-for-sale market is poised to grow even further in 2012 as the overall economy recovers. “Barring a global economic shock, we expect a continued steady slow path to improvement,” he says.

In 2010, small-business transactions rose 2.9%, according to BizBuySell, but that small increase had followed the whopping 28% decrease in such transactions during 2009.

By RUTH SIMON and ANDREW R. JOHNSON

Personal loans fell out of favor during the financial crisis. But they are starting to make a comeback at lenders such as Wells Fargo, Discover Financial Services and TD Bank.

Some borrowers are using personal loans for big-ticket items, such as paying for a wedding or home repairs, or to help children get settled after college. At a time when many people are seeking to pare their debt, a personal loan—which isn’t secured by borrower assets—can also help borrowers take control of existing debt and pay it off over a fixed term.

The increased interest in personal loans comes as consumers across all income levels are looking to get more disciplined, says Todd Denbo, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo. “They want a known monthly payment and a known light at the end of the tunnel,” he says.

Robert Barabani, a 30-year old accountant in Elmwood Park, N.J., is consolidating $15,000 of credit-card debt used to pay for home improvements into a personal loan from Wells Fargo. “We decided to get the charges off higher-interest credit cards and get a longer-term loan with a lower interest rate,” he says.

Lenders, meanwhile, are looking for ways to grow. Wells Fargo saw double-digit gains in personal lending last year, says Mr. Denbo, who declined to provide specific figures.

Originations of personal loans fell sharply in 2008 and 2009, but have begun to edge up, increasing 4.5% in the first 11 months of 2011 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the credit bureau Equifax.

Some banks are ramping up their marketing. U.S. consumers received 424.8 million offers in the mail for personal loans in 2011, up from 290.5 million in 2010, according to research firm Mintel Comperemedia.

TD Bank, a unit of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank, saw a 25% increase in applications for unsecured personal loans in November and December, says TD Bank Executive Vice President Michael Copley.

Renewed interest in personal loans comes as falling home values and tighter lending standards have made tapping home equity, once a common source of financing, less attractive and, in many cases, impossible.

Just 15% of homeowners who refinanced their mortgage in the fourth quarter increased their loan balance by at least 5%, the lowest level in 26 years, according to Freddie Mac. The number of new home-equity line of credit originations has fallen every year since 2006, according to the credit bureau Equifax.

Such loans aren’t without risk, of course. The biggest: It can be tempting to pile on new charges after consolidating existing debt.

“If you’re someone who relies on credit cards as a supplemental source of income, getting into a situation like this is always dangerous,” says Abigail Ford, a manager at Consumer Credit Counseling Service of San Francisco.

Mark Cole, chief operating officer of CredAbility, an Atlanta-based credit counselor, advises borrowers to close existing lines of credit after taking out a personal loan. Otherwise, “all you are doing is really digging a deeper hole,” he says.

A borrower with good credit can expect to pay 8.49% to 14.49% for a personal loan with a five-year term, according to loan tracker Informa Research. That compares well with rates as high as 24.9% on some credit cards, but can be higher than rates on mortgages and auto loans that are secured by collateral.

Some lenders offer even sweeter deals. American Eagle Federal Credit Union, based in East Hartford, Conn., this winter issued 12-month “Holiday Helper” loans with a 3.75% rate. This month, it will offer a debt-consolidation special with a rate as low as 6.5% for a loan with a 36-month term. Borrowers can cut their rate by an additional 0.25 percentage point if they arrange to have payments automatically deducted from their credit-union checking account.

Discover began offering unsecured personal loans about six years ago, but recently stepped up direct mail offers as part of its effort to diversify beyond credit cards. About two-thirds of borrowers also have a Discover credit card, but the company has started making more loans to new customers. It will lend up to $25,000. The loans are currently being offered by invitation only.

“Our ideal customer is someone who has a little bit of debt,” says Discover Vice President Nick Brown. They are “actively trying to manage their finances and they are looking for a product that offers simplicity and financial benefits.”

TD Bank offers loans from $5,000 to $50,000 for up to 60 months, with fixed rates of 6% to 10%. It targets borrowers with credit scores in the mid-700s, Mr. Copley says. Standards vary by lender, but borrowers with good credit generally have scores of 720 or higher.

Wells Fargo, meanwhile, will lend up to $100,000, but says $8,000 to $10,000 loans are most common. Rates range from 9% to 21%, depending on credit score, income, intended use of funds, relationship with the bank and total borrowings.

The bottom line, says Mike Sullivan, director of education for Take Charge America, a Phoenix-based credit-counseling agency: “If by consolidating debt you can pay it off faster or pay it off cheaply, thereby increasing your net worth over a five-year period, it’s probably a good idea.”

Write to Ruth Simon at ruth.simon@wsj.com

By SHEFALI ANAND

When giving to charity, do it in the most tax-efficient ways possible, says Norman Boone, president of Mosaic Financial Partners Inc. in San Francisco.

For some, that could mean donating investments that have appreciated rather than writing a check, he says. The donors can deduct the fair value of the asset from their tax bill and avoid the capital-gains tax that would have come from selling the investment. This works with stocks, mutual funds, “real estate, bonds and other appreciated assets,” says Mr. Boone.

Most brokerage firms can help clients donate securities, and most charities are set up to receive them.

In this column, we feature prominent financial advisers who rely on mutual funds and exchange-traded funds to make client investments. Mr. Boone founded Mosaic Financial in 1988. The firm currently manages $450 million in assets, primarily for individuals. In 2007, Mr. Boone was ranked among the top financial advisers in the U.S. by Barron’s magazine, published by News Corp.’s Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal. He is a former board member of the Financial Planning Association, a trade association for financial advisers.

Andy Berry

Norman Boone

Mr. Boone uses tax planning as a key part of financial planning for clients. For individuals who do a lot of charitable giving, he recommends using a donor-advised fund. The fund “is itself considered a charity, so you get the full charitable deduction in Year One,” he says. You can then take your time in directing the money to individual charities, and it is invested in the interim.

Donor-advised funds have been set up by several investment firms, and can be particularly useful in years when an individual has come into a lot of money. For instance, if an entrepreneur has sold a part of his company, or an individual has received a big bonus or exercised a lot of stock options, some part of the cash could be transferred to a donor-advised fund. From the fund, donors can later “spread out the gift in smaller sums to their favorite charities,” says Mr. Boone.

Individuals should also consider banking losses on their investments, says Mr. Boone. Sometimes, to harvest tax losses, individuals should consider selling their losing investment and buying another very similar one, so as not to be out of the market.

Here, Mr. Boone shares a model portfolio that he uses for clients who have a moderate risk appetite. The portfolio has a weighted average expense ratio of 0.53%, according to Mr. Boone. This is in addition to Mosaic’s money-management fee of 1% or less, depending on assets.

U.S. STOCKS: The model portfolio has an allocation of 22% to U.S. equities, with 15% in large-company stocks. Mr. Boone doesn’t think that stock pickers on average can beat the broad market net of their expenses, so he mostly uses index-based mutual funds for clients. “We want broad exposure to the asset and we want it to be as low in expense as possible,” he says.

However, Mr. Boone doesn’t use traditional index mutual funds. Six months ago, he started buying funds from Charles Schwab Corp. which track so-called fundamental indexes. Unlike traditional indexes in which stocks are ranked based on their market capitalization, fundamental indexes weight stocks by factors including a company’s sales and cash flows.

“It’s a better way to decide what companies go into the index,” says Mr. Boone.

His 15% allocation to large-company stocks goes into Schwab Fundamental U.S. Large Company Index, while he puts 4% in Schwab Fundamental U.S. Small-Mid Company Index.

Mr. Boone also buys funds from Dimensional Fund Advisors Inc. of Austin, Texas, which uses computer models to buy stocks with certain risk-and-return characteristics and then holds them for a long time. DFA funds tend to lean toward cheap or “value” stocks and stocks of small companies, which the company believes will outperform the market over the long run—a philosophy Mr. Boone agrees with.

He allocates 3% to DFA U.S. Micro Cap, which buys stocks of tiny companies.

FOREIGN STOCKS: To be in line with global stock-market weightings, Mr. Boone invests more than half of clients’ stock dollars in foreign stocks, at 24%. Schwab Fundamental International Large Company Index gets 12%, and the remaining 12% is split evenly between DFA International Small Company and DFA Emerging Markets Core Equity.

BONDS AND CASH: The portfolio’s 30% allocation to bonds and cash is primarily in funds managed by Allianz SE’s Pacific Investment Management Co. in which managers pick bonds they believe will beat the overall bond market. “We’re a little contradictory in that we use largely active managers for bonds,” says Mr. Boone.

“Pimco has dependably and consistently outperformed the indexes,” he adds.

Ten percent of the portfolio is in Pimco Low Duration, which buys short-term bonds, while 4% is in Pimco Total Return and 3% is in Pimco Foreign Bond (U.S.-Dollar Hedged). There is 7% in Pimco Real Return, which buys Treasury inflation-protected securities. “We are concerned about future inflation, so we seek protection where we can find it,” says Mr. Boone.

There is a 5% allocation to DFA Five-Year Global Fixed Income, which buys both U.S. and foreign bonds. One percent of the portfolio is in cash.

ALTERNATIVES: Partly for inflation protection and partly to further diversify clients’ holdings, Mr. Boone invests 24% of the portfolio in nontraditional investments.

These include a fund that buys shares of real-estate investment trusts and real-estate companies around the world, DFA Global Real Estate Securities, at 4%, and another that invests in commodity-linked derivative instruments, Pimco CommodityRealReturn Strategy, at 3%.

Mr. Boone also buys an ETF that invests in bonds issued by developing countries, iShares JPMorgan USD Emerging Markets Bond, at 3%. He considers this an alternative investment because these bonds are volatile and don’t perform like traditional bonds.

To get exposure to foreign currencies, Mr. Boone puts 3% in Pimco Emerging Markets Currency.

There is a 3% allocation to the UBS Etracs Alerian MLP Infrastructure exchange-traded note, which aims to provide the return of an index of energy-focused master limited partnerships, minus its fee. MLPs are mostly companies that own and operate pipelines, primarily for natural gas and oil.

Among the more exotic nontraditional funds are AQR Diversified Arbitrage, which aims to make money by betting on merger and other types of arbitrage, and Arrow Managed Futures Trend, which invests in derivatives linked to commodities, currencies and other assets.

These two funds get a 3% allocation each. They are relatively pricey, with expense ratios of 1.5% and 1.8% of assets a year. But Mr. Boone believes that despite these costs they help the portfolio because they have “very low correlation to stocks and bonds.” He adds that if lower-cost funds become available using these strategies, he would switch to them.

Finally, Mr. Boone allocates 2% to individual stocks of companies in the timber business, because these stocks have added to the portfolio return over time. “What drives timber stocks is sufficiently different than what drives the broader U.S market,” he says.

Ms. Anand is a personal-finance columnist for The Wall Street Journal, based in New Delhi. Email: shefali.anand@wsj.com.

By ANNAMARIA ANDRIOTIS

Cabrini College

• Tuition cut: 12.5%
• Tuition and fees in 2012-13: $29,000 (down from $33,176 this year)

Located near Philadelphia, Cabrini College lowered annual tuition for the upcoming school year below $30,000 with the hope of attracting students who would otherwise look for a cheaper alternative. And tuition isn’t expected to go up anytime soon: The college has pledged to keep tuition and fees under $30,000 for at least three academic years, through May 2015. The tuition cut applies to all undergraduate students.

Financial aid totaled $18.3 million for undergrads this year, and while aid for next year hasn’t been determined yet, the school vows not to reduce scholarships for returning students. “We anticipate that the vast majority of students, both new and continuing, will pay less next year than this year,” says a university spokesman.

Room and board, which average $11,742 this year, are estimated to rise by 1% next year.

Lincoln College

• Tuition cut: 24%
• Tuition and fees in 2012-13: $17,480 (down from $23,000 this year)

As the cost of attending Lincoln College kept rising, the school noticed fewer students were enrolling. By the current academic year, the total number of students enrolled at the Lincoln, Ill.-based institution fell below the 1,300 threshold the school always maintained to about 1,275, says Tony Cardenas, vice president for enrollment management and student services. Hit by sticker shock — the cost of tuition, fees, room and board is $29,000 this year — “parents weren’t giving us a second look, so we knew we had to make an adjustment,” he says.

The school cut tuition for the upcoming year (and will keep room and board unchanged at $7,000). Cardenas says applications are already higher than they were a year ago.

Financial aid will likely change though, he says. This year the school gave out roughly $7 million in non-loan aid to students, an amount likely to drop as a result of the tuition cut.

Dave Hitchborne

University of Charleston

• Tuition cut: 22%
• Tuition and fees in 2012-13: $20,700 (down from $26,200)

When the stock market plummeted in August and worries about another recession returned, a number of incoming freshmen scheduled to start at the University of Charleston in the fall called to cancel their enrollment, says Edwin Welch, president of the University of Charleston in West Virginia. Many of these students said they would attend more affordable colleges, he says.

In an attempt to hold on to students and to assuage parents’ financial concerns, the university decided to reduce tuition by 22% for new students and give at least $6,000 in free aid to all returning ones. That means students won’t pay more than $19,500 out of pocket for tuition. (Fees will remain the same as this year at $1,200.)

Additional financial aid, however, will drop. This year the university gave out $15.5 million in free aid, slightly up from $15 million the year prior, but next year it could fall to $10 million, says Welch. He says that decrease would be equal to roughly the amount of aid the school’s 1,000 undergrads will get with the tuition cut. And other costs will rise. Room and board, which averages $9,000 a year, will likely increase by 1% to 2%, he says.

William Peace University

• Tuition cut: 7.7%
• Tuition and fees in 2012-13: $23,900 (down from $25,900)

Among the many changes William Peace University in Raleigh, N.C., is implementing next year — including converting from an all-girls college to a coed university — will be lowering tuition for all undergrads. Its goal is to increase enrollment from 600 students to at least 900 in the next five to seven years, says Debra Townsley, the university’s president.

In addition, the school plans to leave the free financial aid it’s been offering students unchanged, at roughly $3.5 million per year. Students who maintain the necessary grades to keep their merit aid should expect the same award next year. Likewise, for those who receive needs-based aid, as long as their financial circumstances remain the same.

The cost of dorming will remain unchanged at $6,186, but food costs will rise by $120 to $2,814.

Duquesne University

• Tuition and fees cut: 50% in the form of a grant for freshmen who enroll in its School of Education
• Tuition and fees in 2012-13: $14,355 (down from $28,671)

In a typical year, Duquesne University’s School of Education enrolls 85 to 100 undergrads. But this year that number dropped to 60, says Paul-James Cukanna, associate provost for enrollment management. He says students who were planning to attend changed their minds after teacher cutbacks at schools throughout the country picked up. Their concern, he says, was going into debt to pay for high tuition and graduating without a job.

To lower the costs of obtaining an education degree and boost enrollment, the Pittsburgh, Pa.-based university decided to offer a grant equal to 50% of current tuition and fees to incoming education students.

Room and board will rise next year for all students by 3% to 4% from its current level of roughly $9,800.

Seton Hall University

• Tuition and fees cut: roughly $21,000 for incoming high achieving freshmen
• Tuition and fees in 2012-13: $10,104 (down from roughly $31,000)

To attract high-achieving students away from public colleges, South Orange, N.J.-based Seton Hall University is offering the same tuition costs as its state’s largest public college, Rutgers University. The result is a 61% discount on Seton Hall tuition that equals more than $21,000 in savings for the upcoming academic year. The discount is strictly for incoming freshmen with top grades and SAT scores. “A lot of families think private education is out of their reach,” says Alyssa McCloud, vice president of enrollment management. “We’re trying to make it as affordable as public education.”

The free financial aid the school gives out will remain unchanged at about $62 million a year. Room and board, which costs about $11,000 a year, will rise between 1% and 5% though the exact amount hasn’t been determined yet, she says. Fees that are currently around $1,500 will rise by a similar amount, though unlike most schools they include free laptops for each student that get replaced with new ones after two years.