Dive Brief:
- Collegeabacus.com, a website that aims to make college shopping easier by presenting prices for thousands of schools, is at the center of a fight.
- Some applaud the site for its transparency, but others say it is trying to profit from colleges' proprietary information.
- Several schools have blocked it from accessing their prices, though some officials say that the college price comparison site could result in colleges offering more competitive prices, similar to Kayak and Expedia's impact on hotels.
Dive Insight:
The cost comparison tool launched in October and allows over 3,600 colleges to be searched and compared for free. A premium spreadsheet of the top 200 colleges and universities is also available for $100. This seems to be the beginning of what could be a long back-and-forth. Student Aid Services, which manages the price calculators for hundreds of colleges, began refusing the traffic from College Abacus shortly after it launched.
