The long, contentious, and often self-interested debate on whether higher education is becoming too expensive has become even more strident since the Great Recession. Is there really a "crisis" in college costs? Are colleges to blame?
The Delta Cost Project and other economic studies inform the discussion of the causes of rising college costs and the effect of financial aid on the "net price" that students actually pay. It is a complex and controversial set of issues, but economists Robert Archibald and David Feldman (authors of Why Does College Cost So Much?) said it best in a recent New York Times "Opinionator" blog post:
"Many families are indeed priced out of the market or forced to choose education options that are less desirable... We have no doubt that the recent recession has made college and university charges less affordable no matter how one measures affordability."
So let's stop the intellectual shoving matches and get about the business of dealing with those factors that can and should be controlled to attenuate the rate of rise of both cost and price. And let's also stop apologizing for investments that are necessary to keep higher education one of America's premier "products."
Post-secondary education is sought after around the world because it serves individuals and the larger society. We can argue long and hard about "return on investment," calculated as incremental personal income, compared to the net price of a baccalaureate or advanced degree, but in a recent survey by the American Council on Education, more than 89 percent of young alumni reported that their college experience had been worth it, and 85 percent reported that their education had prepared them, at least adequately, for their jobs. The increasing emphasis on higher education in China, India and other emerging economies is testimony to the near-universal agreement that success in this world, not to mention national competitiveness, requires more, not less, higher education. Thus, we as a country need to expand, not contract, the availability of higher education and increase public investment in colleges and universities.
In addition to its traditional missions of teaching, research and public engagement, higher education is a major employer throughout the United States. No magic bullet will replace the human service-intensive nature of modern higher education and its associated costs. Information technology, for example, may extend the reach of higher education and hugely increase the efficiency of delivering certain kinds of material, particularly at the remedial and introductory levels. But it is unlikely ever to supplant our college and university campuses, especially those where research is conducted. Technology is only part of the answer to issues of cost, affordability and access.
Nor should we begrudge funds spent on certain "nonacademic" activities. Sure, to put it mildly, the higher education community is no paragon of efficiency and cost-effectiveness -- more on that below. But most non-faculty-related activities are not "administrative bloat." There is evidence aplenty, for example, that student support services such as counseling improve persistence and graduation rates and are critical to student health and well-being.
And we must understand that as the states continue to reduce their relative investment in higher education -- between FY 2001 and FY 2009, the inflation-adjusted average state appropriation per FTE student fell by over $1,000, or 13 percent -- tuition will continue to rise. It's simple economics, and no amount of wishful thinking or browbeating will change that inverse relationship. But the rate of rise will depend on the balance between total revenue available to each college and its cost structure.
So what can be done to control college costs? The recession we are experiencing is not a normal, cyclical "blip" on an ever-upward revenue curve. It is unlike anything that most of us have ever experienced, and it will be with us for some time. Consequently, we in higher education have to make some fundamental changes in the way we do business. We are used to balancing our budgets almost completely on the revenue side. Like other establishments, we utilize all revenue reasonably at our disposal: tuition, state appropriations, federal appropriations, grants, gifts and, in a relatively small proportion of institutions, endowment income. Most institutions allocate some of this revenue, including tuition dollars, to manage the "net price" of attendance for individual students, factoring in the financial resources of the family and the attractiveness of the student from the institution's perspective.
But the rate of tuition rise is unsustainable. Attenuating this rate of increase can only be achieved through cost-containment. It's as simple and complex as that. Given the current financial pressure, this will take time. Three sets of activities are needed, and we'd better get about them:
1. No campus can be all things to all people. Now is the time to decide, campus by campus, what we can do best and aspire to improved quality in those fields. And the other disciplines that we know to be less well-developed on campus A? Leave them to campus B, across town or across the state. Better, foster communication between the faculties of A and B to realize economies of scale in providing instruction in less popular fields, optimize coordination, and reduce competition. This is an area where information technology can be extremely useful. Bottom line: focus and connectivity.
2. We can no longer avoid true, tough and thoroughgoing reviews of faculty productivity and quality, including after tenure is granted. Our colleges vary widely on the presence and effectiveness of reviews of faculty quality and productivity and of post-tenure evaluations. No outside entity will ever perform this function as well as we ought to be able to within the academy. It's likely that more rigorous faculty accountability - conducted by peers and colleagues -- will result in some reduction in the costs of education and of the infrastructure of research. Bottom line: accountability.
3. "Administrative" activities are as essential to the success of higher education as they are to any enterprise of any type anywhere. But the discipline and expertise needed to contain the costs of those activities is often lacking in our colleges. More uniform, managed methods of procurement, fewer layers of bureaucracy and larger spans of control for those in administrative positions can help, as can a rethinking of our support paradigms in information technology, finance, and facilities services. Some colleges have found that reducing support costs allows greater focus on the highest priority aspirations of the institution. At Cornell, we recognized early in the recession that we lacked the detailed skills to identify all of the potential areas for cost savings and to design remedies, so we brought in a consulting firm to assist, guide, and cajole us. Not all schools can afford to engage a consulting firm, but all can find ways to spend less on administrative functions. Bottom line: administrative streamlining.
Given our continuing uncertain economy, I call on my colleagues in higher education to reduce the rate of rise of our operating costs through focus, connectivity, accountability and administrative streamlining. Improvements in higher education's pricing and accessibility will follow.
Dylan Ratigan: Get America Working: We Need a Movement to Solve a Crisis
Considering the unlivable wages and no benefits paid the majority of the faculty, administrators should be happy that the adjunct has a pulse. I'll take $50K a year, bennies, and NO tenure. Then you could review me yearly up and down. I live and teach in Palm Beach county, Florida where $50K is not a big salary. My wages from teaching amount to around $14,000 a year, less than what I was making in 1977. I enjoy the subject, creativity, freedom and even get through to a student now and then. I am not in it for the money. Finally, the adjunct situation could be improved but not from increased tuition. There must be other avenues.
Why is the adjunct issue left out of this discussion?
Today, that statistic is reversed. Only about a quarter of the teaching load is performed by full time faculty today. The rest is performed by adjuncts on contract.
These adjuncts often have no job security. They could find out on the day they start a term that their sections were cancelled or taken over by full timers. They have no benefits such as tuition waviers for themselves or their families. No parking passes. No health care (even though many universities are affiliated with a hospital). No offices or support services means that some have to hold office in the student lounges and make photocopies out of their own pocket. They usually don't get sections year round (especially not in the summer). When they do get sections, they are usually teaching a full load, or even more than a full load.
The reason I mention these "shadow staffers" is that they seldom come up in discussions about university costs. But as universities rely upon them more and more, it seems that discussions about the high price of faculty and staff ring more and more hollow. The bulk of sections are taught by people who make $1-3 thousand a section before taxes.
I agree with the general sentiment of your comment; however, please remember that the community college system was almost completely financed by taxpayers until a few years ago. Likewise, if you went to a state four year university, your tuition probably paid for less than a quarter of the cost of your degree.
That said...higher education is a privilege. To the extent that it benefits the public, it's probably in the public's best interest to chip-in. Otherwise, the beneficiary (student) ought to shoulder the burden.
I believe that fewer than 50% of Freshmen complete their programs. At some universities, the completion rate is less than 20%.
Would cutting costs include being more selective about Freshman enrollment? Lots of students just aren't ready for higher education, and waste a couple of years of their life finding that out.
Perhaps we should do a better job of screening incoming students, or have less tolerance for students who's primary aim in college is to attend as many parties as possible.
I'm not sure I follow what you posted. Reducing the number of students at a university would reduce costs. Few students pay more than a tiny fraction of their own costs at a university. Most of the difference comes from the taxpayers...Especially at state supported schools.
Is this actually true? According to this site, http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/?level=nation&mode=graph&state=0&submeasure=27
No. By state, a bit more than half of freshman graduate in 6 years. I have no idea what the actual number is (not aggregated by state. I mean, Alaska's rate is 22% and California's is 63; these are weighted the same even tho California surely has orders of magnitude more students).
So I don't think it makes sense to make a lot of policy decisions based on this "belief."
China's going to end up owning the place in a 3-way split with Saudi Arabia and Israel , so, what's the point of becoming a better-educated wage slave anyway? Smart enough to do the job, smart enough to get through dumbed-down curriculum, but dumb enough to fall for student loans, car loans, home loans, and end up a good little hamster until you drop dead, is that the game, there?
If you really want to learn something, go to the bookstore, or the library, or online. College? Some companies will NOT hire college grads. Why?
One real, sincere way to save tons of money is to stop having excess freshman and sophmore slots, when many of those individuals drop out. Many are either not prepared for college or just show up to party. When individuals are not in the tops of their classes or on the cusp in other ways, then they should be required to earn a slot at a costly University or College by attending Junior Colleges and doing very well there. That would screen out the slacks, permit smaller campuses and smaller faculties for freshman and sophmore subjects at the larger institutions and even permit two institutions to perhaps share a professor. It is going to take changes and flexibility to solve these problems and they must be done.
Was it worth that price?
Maxing out credit cards, working two jobs,
and finding themselves with
"no room for them in the inn." ???
(Except, perhaps, as an employee working at The (Holiday) Inn...)
;-)
How is China this time of year?
But you're right...That won't last forever.
In a monopolistic priced education system, the tendency would be to increase prices to the point where as much of the financial benefit to the student of a college education is extracted out as tuition, without going so far as to discourage the student from attending college at all.
So, if a student were to make X dollars over their lifetime without college and 2X with, tuition might trend to a point where it captures 0.6 to 0.7 X dollars, minimizing the student's ROI while leaving the student with all of the debt risk.
One solution to breaking this tendency might be by inducing competition through a ranking system which compares colleges, for a given degree, by tuition costs multiplied by an 'education effectiveness' factor (between 0.0 and 1.0). We do similar things with consumer products, why not college?