College Recreation Spending Outpaces Money Spent On Instruction

According to a new report, college spending on recreation is rising at a faster rate than spending on education.

The report, titled "Trends in College Spending 1998-2008" and done by the Delta Cost Project, indicates that colleges of all stripes are shelling out money not just for services like career counseling but amenities like student centers.

The New York Times has one theory on the spending trend:

"This is the country-clubization of the American university," said Richard Vedder, a professor at Ohio University who studies the economics of higher education. "A lot of it is for great athletic centers and spectacular student union buildings. In the zeal to get students, they are going after them on the basis of recreational amenities."

Further, spending at private colleges and universities, which serve a small portion of the nation's students, is increasing at a faster rate than community college spending, which cater to many more students.

Inside Higher Ed reports on another substantial expenditure for colleges: administrative salaries. Harvard is their example:

Harvard University -- in particular -- blows tons of money on administrative pay. In recent years, Harvard did indeed make significant investments in "administrative support and maintenance," a category that does not directly relate to teaching but instead includes high-level administrators, accountants, lawyers and university presidents. The figure, which includes physical plant operations as well, rose to $41,891 per student in 2008 - a nearly 14 percent increase over the previous year.

According to the report, the U.S. has the world's wealthiest higher education system, with an average of $19,000 spent per student.

What's your take on this? Leave a comment with your opinion.

Comments

[Omamed]

11:37 AM on 07/12/2010

I'm too young to remember the actual days when faculty acted as teachers AND administrators (check your history, it's true). But now administrtion duties are handled by folks who are paid to act as administrators, supporting faculty objectives... conferences, lectures... And also to act as aides to students... Counseling, Academic Advisors... So obviously administrators doing the work of teaching faculty is the fault of administrators, and not the folks who used to do it, but don't any longer. Parents want country club accomodations, and have the stones to complain about the costs now. Teaching faculty want time off from teaching to do administration, and have the stones to complain that costs of administration is going up. What to do, what to do!??!

[alilje]

11:43 PM on 07/11/2010

"According to a new report, college spending on recreation is rising at a faster rate than spending on education."

Another in a long list of reasons we keep falling behind the rest of the industrialized world.

[hollybork]

11:51 AM on 07/11/2010

Investing in recreation centers, administrative support and maintenance? Sounds like the priorities in higher education are being set by advertising agencies and marketing specialists. No wonder the middle class can't afford to send their kids to college without mortgaging the house to the hilt and going further into debt.

Got to support all those expensive advisers! They make everybody looks so good ON PAPER.

Oh, and balance those budgets will ya! Forget about the billions you have in tax free endowment funds. Take the cost of the fancy advisers out of the money offered to associated instructors and assistant professors. They can live in their cars, come on!

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Make sure the brochures to attract next years class, and their rich parents who will further contribute to the endowment, is printed on the finest paper, with lots of color closeups of snuggling, beautiful co eds and jocks carrying books like they read them. Make sure to hold a lot of cocktail parties and meet and greet events for the prospectives, too. That gives more work for those highly paid administrators, opportunities to shine in their expensive clothes.

[lilpeg]

05:09 PM on 07/10/2010

The real tragedy here is that they are not spending the money on faculty and staff and research materials. BTW folks worrying about obesity, we were not fat in college. We had to walk everywhere...no cars on campus and the cafeteria food was barely edible. We played intramural sports and ran and hiked and swam and skiied on our own. Our faculty was fabulous!!!!

[okchamali]

11:11 AM on 07/10/2010

@thereisonlyoneparty. You seem to have the answer to everyone's post here. I'll let your statement speak for itself. It certainly sums up the sorry state of affairs.

[Reticent]

10:54 PM on 07/09/2010

Duh. Students are "consumers" now and instruction is a "product" provided by "independent contractors" through the corporate University System. To make that product delivery "value added" and desirable to the "consumers", more money must be spent on "life style" and "ancillary services" (Actual language used in trustee discussions at many major state universities).

[isis]

09:59 PM on 07/09/2010

If you want to know if a college is a good value ask what percent of the budget is spent on education. In many places it has fallen below 20%.

[okchamali]

06:55 PM on 07/09/2010

The salaries of football and basketball coaches is criminal. Our football coach is over $2.5 million. The new President of the University of Illinois is over $600,000, and he was given 2 homes and many other expensive perks. Meanwhile, faculty salaries have been frozen or reduced to 1 or 2 percent. Write to your legislators and the Board of Trustees of your state institutions. Everything is completely out of control. One lone professor.

[thereisonlyoneparty]

10:45 AM on 07/10/2010

How do you think universities land donations?

The strength of the philosophy department?

[okchamali]

11:11 AM on 07/10/2010

I see where your priorities lie.

[Fightingformyrights]

01:45 AM on 07/11/2010

Yes? And their Science Research, and their Business moguls, and their Fine Arts celebrities, and their Math geniuses, and their Literary masters. When serious students want a serious education, they look for the out put of the academic depts.

Sports teams land season tickets. Other than Stadium naming, major donations come from previous students who want to give back to the school who taught them how to beat their competition.

[mikefina]

03:58 PM on 07/09/2010

While condemnation of excessive expenditures on student 'leisure' is a worthwhile subject--why the picture? Ultimate requires about $7 dollars "investment" to keep 20+ students active for the 5.5 years they spend pursuing their degree.

There is no better "bang-for-your-buck" investment than 175g of Discraft plastic.

[tommybill]

02:41 PM on 07/09/2010

go to Swarthmore get an education

[roshni]

10:18 AM on 07/11/2010

My daughter's first choice is Swarthmore.

[pablogalante]

12:50 PM on 07/09/2010

exactly why my kids went to study abroad university
http://www.studyabroaduniversity.com

[Charity]

12:18 PM on 07/09/2010

Several years ago, my alma mater - a large land grant university in the south - built a lavish student recreation center with a fully equipped 24 hour fitness center. At the same time the center opened, the university library cut back on hours citing budget constraints.

[Lisbeth35]

12:27 PM on 07/09/2010

That is happening RIGHT NOW at our local state university. Closing satellite library spaces, cutting back on librarian and staff, moving books to storage. But a brand new fitness center is opening...August 2010.

[pablogalante]

12:51 PM on 07/09/2010

Thats really bad - like we need more UFC fighters - lol

[EvitaLuisa]

11:14 PM on 07/09/2010

No, you don't get it, do you. we need more hefties who surely look like you and make surly comments about education and getting a well-rounded life; yours, ahem, may be too well rounded, as you write as if all students who work out will actually become UFC material.
well, YOU won't, that's for sure!

[formerprof]

11:49 AM on 07/09/2010

In these difficult times, colleges still need to pander to what prospective students and their families want. And they want superb facilities and distracting activities. So costs for non-instructional infrastructure zoom. And then people wonder why tuition goes up faster than the cost-of-living index!

By the way, the pandering extends to academic standards, too. Failing students who don't meet minimal requirements is almost unheard of. The big buzzword these days is "retention" [of students].

[FPhoebe]

12:42 PM on 07/09/2010

People who get by on C's and D's should not be in college. Period. I don't want to compete with people who do half the work I do and care only half as much as I do. The people who come to class to sleep/text/not participate are exactly the type of people these sports facilities and anything associated with them attract. (I'm NOT lumping everyone who is into sports in one category; there are people who are very into sports and very into academics as well). Undergrad has become kind of a joke, because people know how easy it is to get into a halfway decent college these days, and how little work one has to do to earn a degree.

[okchamali]

06:52 PM on 07/09/2010

Thank you. As a professor in the humanities, I cannot begin to tell you the callibre of students that make it into supposedly respectable universities. I strongly encouraged my kids to work before they went to school (like we used to do in the old days). Bless them, they listened to me. This summer, after several years of supporting themselves on crappy restaurants jobs, they were ready to enroll in school. And, now, they don't even want to ask us for help. They've gotten into supportin themselves after waiting on hungover university students charging their restaurant meals and everything else on the credit cards their parents provided or that they themselves will be saddled with forever.

[azatrox]

01:40 AM on 07/10/2010

Um, are you at the same university where I teach?

[Milisla]

11:46 AM on 07/09/2010

The title should read: 'American Universities Recreation Spending Outpaces Money Spent On Instruction'.

[FPhoebe]

11:33 AM on 07/09/2010

Just got an email alert about my college adding collegiate level lacrosse teams starting next year. Just what we need, another team that we pay too much for and never wins, in the division three league....while the major I'm in, one of the biggest on campus, has 3 classrooms to its name. I don't even want to get into how much they spend on the crummy football team.

[Tacking it Easy]

11:36 AM on 07/09/2010

I can definitely understand your frustration. I went to a really large school, but having political science as one of my majors (one of the largest), we were "quarantined" in one of the oldest buildings on campus for all our classes. To call it frustrating would be an understatement.