Small private colleges depend on tuition dollars to survive. To attract students, they lower the initial price tags, instead of offering discount rates, which, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers, have cruised past 52 percent nationally. More than 40 colleges in the past 20 years have reduced tuition by $1,000 or more. Some have chopped their prices by more than 50 percent. In the past, most colleges and universities that announced resets enrolled fewer than 5,000 students. But with the public sector also seeing enrollment decreases, several larger universities have also jumped on the tuition reduction bandwagon.