Some colleges offer no-frills education at lower cost

The Salem satellite campus of Southern New Hampshire University, if it can generously be called that, encompasses the third floor of a new brick building in a nondescript suburban office park just off an interstate. Tuition costs just $10,000 a year. Twenty miles north, in Manchester, students on the school's wooded main campus shell out $25,000 in tuition to attend classes taught by some of the same professors. In addition to academics, though, they have access to a state-of-the-art gym with a rotating climbing wall and an Olympic-size pool. By next January, they will dine in a $14 million food court. Southern New Hampshire is at the forefront of a push by some colleges to provide a no-frills, lower-cost education for students who don't mind forgoing traditional college life and its accompanying amenities.