How many computers does it need now?
Large scale organizations are suppose to benefit from the the large scale and be more efficient.
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I don’t disagree, but name me one that actually does that. Bureaucratic institutions have benefits and drawbacks. The reasons for risings costs is not easy to pin down and isn’t all on the universities. The cost of living is higher, the cost of goods is higher, the cost of everything a unversity offers is higher.
And it certainly isn’t because we’re all sitting over here with hookers and blow, looking through our gold plated microscopes…
There are major problems with funding in the university system, but the question is about why costs have gotten so high and why students are drowning in debt.
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A non trivial chunk goes to bloated administrative salaries. The administrators always feather their own nests first.
The rest feeds into institutional upgrades that in turn draw in more money, an endless inflationary cycle that raises the school’s budget and endowment far beyond reason. Institutional budgets are the non profit organization’s version of corporate profits - they’re how the rich people who run the institutions keep score and measure bragging rights. And institutional endowments are basically giant hedge funds that the administrators get to play with (like catnip for the 0.01%) and get to use to enrich their friends in the financial services industry by awarding contracts for fund management.
Institutional upgrades are things like sport facilities and programs on the one hand, and “world class research facilities” on the other. They make the school more prestigious, which draws in more wealthy students who will not need any financial aid, draws in better, more renowned faculty, draws in more grant money, and draws in more alumni contributions. The more renowned faculty in turn draw in more wealthy students. It all feeds into more money for the annual budget and more money for the endowment.
ETA: the vicious cycle got going when government funding for higher education shifted from money given to schools to money loaned to students. And yes, as a side effect, all these institutional upgrades create some awesome educational opportunities, especially for graduate students. But at the cost of making higher education unaffordable to working class people unless they saddle crippling amounts of debt.
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That said, college tuition has increased at a rate MUCH higher than the cost of these expenses and salaries. It doesn’t add up.
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Yes, I don’t disagree with any of that, really. But none of that mitigates what I said about the basics and that money is still being spent on the things that students actually need and might want. Plus, you’re ignoring things like the relationship to public schools to state budgets and political pressures aimed at the academy.
Again, not being spent on hookers, blow, and gold plated microscopes.
I agree, especially considering how many classes are now taught by lectures (often visiting with short appointments) or adjuncts who gets paid per class per semester.
But again. It costs $$$ to run a university.
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When I attended SDSU in 1993, tuition was $751/semester and over $1,000 by the time I graduated. This site says $1,500/year in 93 (inflation adj $2,506) so my memory is correct. The current tuition for 2016-17 is $7,084/year. I suspect that the list above is per semester as that’s the usual way to pay (at least it was when I went there).
Here’s an interesting article from the Daily Cal about tuition history at UC Berkeley from 1868 on:
And the states have been cutting their contributions heavily for a while now.
(Just wanted to emphasize this point.)
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Yes, but there’s no way it requires 10% increases in the budget every single year. Like health care, US university education is expensive far beyond any rational justification, simply because there’s no system to hold the costs in check.
For example:
2016 Berkeley city college tuition: $1380 per year @ 15 credits per semester.
2016 UC Berkeley undergrad tuition: $13,510 per year.
Of course, the city college is not prestigious. I doubt they have a football team, and they don’t have a graduate program. But I somehow really doubt you’re learning 10 times as much in UC Berkeley’s intro to calculus course as in the equivalent course at Berkeley City College. Considering that the city college’s teachers are almost certainly paid less and probably mostly consist of people who love teaching, whereas many of the UC Berkeley’s professors and grad student instructors would really rather be doing research than teaching undergrads, it’s entirely possible you will learn more at the city college.
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The real reason public college tuition is so high is that the government’s contribution has collapsed over the last few decades. Public colleges used to get 80-90% of their funding from taxpayers. Now it’s maybe 10-20%. Basically the baby boomers ate everything in the pot and refused to put anything back in for future generations.
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“Public colleges used to get 80-90% of their funding from taxpayers. Now it’s maybe 10-20%.”
Has the actual amount of government funding decreased, or is it just that what used to be given directly to the schools by governments is now loaned to the students, who give it to the schools, thereby offloading the cost from well off taxpayers onto starving students?
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There are approximately 17 universities where by some accounting athletics turns a profit. (I say some accounting because this often doesn’t include paying for things like electricity or grounds maintenance, which comes from the general budget support which in turn is increasingly paid for mainly by tuition.) Statistically that’s pretty close to none.
By contrast, at most universities - especially with current high tuition levels - the departments with major teaching components (such as English) more than pay for themselves in terms of tuition revenue, and as @anon67050589 points out departments which do research supported by the major funding agencies (NSF, NIH, DOD) bring in considerable revenue to the campus (and to the region where it is located, since that is where all this outside money is spent), usually far in excess of athletics revenues even at the 17 campuses mentioned above.
Now, the funded research part is tricky, since in principle that money is not fungible; it is supposed to be spent 100% on research, even the overhead, and in most cases it costs the university quite a bit of money to bring that money in. Research is both lucrative and expensive, and in recent years has been cited as a major reason the UC system has had financial problems.
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Hello,
My father graduated from Harvard in the mid-1950s. He mentioned his tuition was about $2,000/year, which he covered by working a summer job in a raincoat factory and working in a library during the school year.
I take it tuition cost has gone up since then so it is no longer possible to pay it by taking a summer job and a part-time job during the school year.
As someone who attended a CSU university in the early 80’s, I recall tuitions of just a couple hundred dollars. And the education was great - Hell, it allowed me to go from 1st in family to go to college to a PhD.
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That’s exactly right. I also paid for my college education at a private school by working and had ‘only’ $10,000 in bank loans to pay off afterward, but that was well over 3 decades ago. Current students cannot do it. It’s that basic a difference.
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Again, I don’t disagree. What I was annoyed about initially was the inference that people who work at universities and the very real things a university needs to run is somehow illegitimate. All the things I listed have nothing to do with hookers and gold plated microscopes.
I’ll repeat myself again on this topic, since I’m not really being heard here: the rising costs of colleges is an important issue that I’m obviously interested in, but it isn’t what the OP I was replying to implied. It was more about how some think that they are drains on society as opposed to an asset. Not that you’re implying that, but the OP was.[quote=“Glaurung, post:52, topic:88309”]
it’s entirely possible you will learn more at the city college.
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I really agree with this point. But costs there are spiking, too, even if not as much.
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No, it has actually decreased. Especially in the past decade. Students bear more of the costs of the university and that is a major reason why the cost has jumped. Neo-liberalism at work.
As for the loans situation, you have to remember that re-routing of $$$ you mention is now associated with higher costs to the consumer (student) because there is another entitiy between the student and the funding. Someone is making $$$ off the $$$$, in other words.
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