Concordia University Saint Paul will reduce the sticker price of its tuition and fees by $10,000, or about 33 percent, for the 2013-2014 academic year. Tuition and fees for all new and returning students in the traditional undergraduate program will drop to $19,700 next year from $29,700 this year, while the price of room and board will not change. The university spent years working toward this announcement, and administrators are excited. With this move, Concordia joins a small group of institutions that have lowered their prices in recent years, including the University of the South, known as Sewanee, and Seton Hall University. And in some ways, tuition cuts make sense: They respond to the chorus of warnings that higher education's high-price, high-aid model is broken, and to families' concerns about college affordability. Still, experts often regard tuition cuts skeptically. Sometimes a cut is more about marketing than real change, they say. A college can reduce its price and its aid at the same time and not substantially change the net price, the actual amount each student pays after grant aid. But Concordia's leaders say they are doing something different. Next year, they expect, all students will pay a lower net price than they would have without the tuition cut. And most of them will pay less than they did the year before, according to university officials. That is not to say the move has nothing to do with marketing. After all, Concordia, a Lutheran institution, wants to be considered by more potential students who may be worried about affordability and turned off by the university's current price.