San Diego State University Tuition in 1959

Infographic: Is Your State’s Highest-Paid Employee A Coach? (Probably)

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If a school is actually expecting $7K in cash coming into their coffers for a given student, they often set the tuition at say $10K, so they can – for most students – immediately offer $3K in costless financial aid. It makes them look better for lots of factors. And by having a $10K rack rate, they also pull in a lot of foreign students whose families don’t know to haggle over financial aid (if they offer it at all); PRC students studying in the US at the full rack rate is a big part of the budget calculation.

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Actually this is about what the tuition is today for the school where our offices are in Phnom Penh – Prek Leap National College of Agriculture. We have a lot of students from the provinces and even at this price they can’t afford it. Most of our students need and get financial aide…

But they all have smart phones, and I’d say 30-40% have laptops, though student dorms are a tin shack that used to be used for housing pigs.

I would predict that ten years from now the tuition will have at least increased by an order of magnitude.

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This would actually be a fascinating bit of cross-border study – tuition increases as countries develop.

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That is interesting. Thanks for the comparision. I think much of this is the general cost of everything in each particular case, right?

I will say that having a laptop and cell phone are now pretty necessary for functioning in a university environment, no matter where it is.

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That map makes sense. College athletics bring in more money to a university that any other department. Now, if they can get the science department to convince alumni to spend $300 on tickets to a science fair then I can see things changing.

Whether the money that is brought in is spent on much else besides athletics is often murky…

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Again, can you please look at my list of things that a university or college needs to function above. I totally agree with both you and @Mister44 about the cost of athletics and the bloated administration… But there are tons of things that the university or colleges need that are worth spending $$$ on and they do indeed get bought. Whether there is enough $$$ on this stuff is a different question, I think.

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Well, I was referring to how much athletics money is spent outside of athletics. The main argument people give about athletic spending is the athletics departments are handled separately financially. I tend to think that goes for profits, too, more than it should.

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Science faculty bring in millions in grant money and produce the next generation of scientific discoveries, as opposed to spending millions in donations toward sporting facilities and perks which do not support themselves.

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Students will always complain, but they’re complaining more now, with justification. At the time and through to the early 1990s tuition at state schools was set in the range of being payable nearly debt-free for most students (scholarships and grants also helped). It was still a significant cost if you compare with historic expenses and cost of living, but public colleges were designed to be an affordable investment in one’s future for a student from a middle- or working-class background.

On the total cost side, tuition now includes supporting bloated administration and coaches and improving non-academic amenities to make the school more marketable. On the payment side, grants have been supplanted by student loans – a major business for the financial services industry, judging by how their lobbyists carved out a dischargeability exception for them in bankruptcy law.

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It seems to imply that residents just paid the fees – nonresidents paid the fees plus $127.

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The $127.50 is for nonresidents.

I think it depends on the university. In some places like U of Texas, Duke, Alabama, etc, the sports programs generate more than enough revenue to be self-sufficient.

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Ah, I get your point. I think you might be right about the profits especially. But the wisdom is that a good football or (to a much less extent) basketball program will bring in more prospective students overall. Whether that’s true or not, I couldn’t say. But I didn’t pick GSU because of their (at the time, non-existent) football team. I picked it primarily for convenience and because I like the school. But I can’t speak for most people and how they decide on their colleges.

Those are few and far between, though. UGA and Tech here in GA might generate enough to be self-sustaining. I doubt the GSU or KSU programs are at this point.

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I’ll just leave this here: https://www.ethz.ch/en/studies/financial/tuition-fees.html

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That looks awesome. It’s a shame that here in the US we don’t value education and the pursuit of greater and deeper knowledge enough to subsidize it for all of our citizens. Comparing us with EU countries really brings home how screwed up our priorities are.

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Learn something new all the timie…