@1stTimeThruMom, note that not everyone pays full list price. The average net tuition that colleges get tend to be around half the list tuition (and some times much less!) with fin aid and/or merit scholarship students paying less. Sometimes much less.
Regardless, I hope you guys go on to do more productive things with your day
“I read somewhere that UT-Austin gets half (or more) of the UT endowment payout with the rest split by all the other UT’s.”
Actually, it is my understanding that approximately 40% of the UT system’s endowment payout is earmarked for the Austin campus, with the remaining 60% being distributed to the other campuses.
Here’s a link to the full AAUP 2018-19 faculty salary list:
https://www.insidehighered.com/aaup-compensation-survey?utm_source=ihe&utm_medium=editorial-site&utm_content=header-link&utm_campaign=aaup&institution-name=&professor-category=1591&order=field_avg_salary&sort=desc
The AAUP salary numbers generally are higher than the IPEDS/Chronicle numbers cited above; the rank order is indeed different in many cases. For example, AAUP shows Columbia at #1 with $259,700 as the full professor salary; IPEDS/Chronicle shows Columbia at #4 with $223,427 as the fps. The differences may reflect different reference years, or different accounting methods, or some combination. My understanding is that the both the AAUP and the IPEDS data ultimately come from the colleges themselves.
Undoubtedly, the educational cost related to grads particularly those at the David Geffen SOM and STEM in general is higher than undergrads. It wouldn’t be wise – as Alexandre might have intimated – to separate the two because the benefit of the increased funding for the former group ends up benefitting the latter also.
This is true in particular to UCLA and probably UCSD. UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center and Geffen SOM are just a stone’s throw from the Life and Physical Sciences Departments as well as Engineering. The latter three sets of undergrads indeed do benefit, synergistically, instructionally, and with respect to facilities.
^ UCLA, Dartmouth, and Brown all have med schools, in any case. Though Princeton doesn’t.
AAUP full prof salary ranking:
1 Columbia
2 Stanford
3 Princeton
4 Harvard
5 UChicago
6 MIT
7 Yale
8 UPenn
9 NYU
10Northwestern
11Duke
12UCLA
13Caltech
14Dartmouth
15Georgetown
16Vanderbilt
17WashU
18Cal
19Babson
20Rice
21JHU
22BU
23BC
24Brown
25UCSB
26NJIT
27ND
28USC
29NEU
30Cornell
31GWU
32Rutgers
33UVa
34UCSD
35UCI
36Barnard
37UT-Austin
38Bentley
39UMich
40UCD
@PurpleTitan . . . understood, but again, perhaps UCLA cannot separate the costs related to grad and undergrad, because they’re tied together too well.
“This is true in particular to UCLA and probably UCSD. UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center and Geffen SOM are just a stone’s throw from the Life and Physical Sciences Departments as well as Engineering. The latter three sets of undergrads indeed do benefit, synergistically, instructionally, and with respect to facilities.”
firmament2x, you are absolutely correct. Undergraduate students benefit a great deal from medical schools and complexes, as well as large engineering programs, such as the ones present at universities like Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, JHU, MIT, Michigan, Northwestern, UCLA etc…That is especially true of premed, life science and Engineering majors.
In most cases, universities include medical and hospital costs, as well as engineering and medical research in their calculations, but they are not supposed to because they are only supposed to include instructional costs directly relevant to undergraduate students. Michigan, for example, clearly does not include medical school and hospital costs or engineering research in its calculation. Perhaps it should in order to boost its standing in the rankings.
Economies of scale also play a big role in the instructional spending per student statistic. Including medical complex expenses and research expenditure at a mid-sized university with a large medical complex and/or engineering program (like Caltech, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, JHU, Stanford, WUSTL, Yale etc…) will obviously be significantly more pronounced on a per student basis at larger universities.
Regardless, instructional spending data are not telling because of they are not consistently calculated, and they do not adjust for economies of scale.
yea, I’d like to see the COL index between Palo Alto, CA and Grinnell, IA!
Virtually every college performance metric is subject to confounding factors (even assuming every school reports its data honestly and according to the same formulas). That said, the Chronicle/IPEDS financial data reporting formulas seem to follow rigorous and transparent accounting standards (GASB/FASB). They are documented in some detail, at least. For example, have a look for example at the “Instruction expenses per FTE (FASB)” info box on the IPEDS site.
Should we accept a single metric at face value? No … but on the other hand, does anyone here believe the salary differences between Stanford and Liberty University are all down to variations in COL or accounting methods?
As I see it, the endowment, instructional spending, salary, class size, and FA numbers taken together seem to point to pretty much the same set of 15-20 top universities. Not that I’d recommend choosing between ~peer schools based only (or even primarily) on these numbers.
LU has taken full advantage of the glut in profs. And the Law School outperformed Stanford on the latest bar exams.
@barron’s: Not a fair comparison unless comparing bar exam results between the two law schools on a state by state basis. California, for example, has the third hardest bar exam in the nation, while the Virginia state bar exam does not rank in the top 10 in the US.
One of the most common misconceptions is that the New York state bar is very difficult when, in fact, it is only the 33rd most difficult out of 50 or 51 jurisdictions.
Guess that depends who you ask. https://www.lawcrossing.com/article/900049085/Which-State-Has-the-Most-Difficult-Bar-Exam/
I agree with not including medical or hospital costs unless they were to relate to students. It would be hard to justify facility and $multi-million equipment costs of Reagan Medical Center (“RMC”) with its 520 beds by depreciation or whatever means to students. The cost of doctors who would be contracted to take care of the patients in the RMC would neither be included, unless the benefit to undergrads would be allocable, but it’d have to be pretty small even though undergrads would have some research involvement within RMC. The Geffen SOM costs would, though, have larger tendrils of benefit to undergrads which is housed in a few places within the complex.
The cost of the Sameuli Engineering building would have to involve undergrads and grads. This building houses classrooms and labs for both sets of students. Perhaps UCLA could allocate the cost of the building according to the proportion of undergrads ~ 3,924 to grads, ~ 2,237 (2018 figures). Then the equipment costs would also be included on top of that. The instruction would involve the engineering professors but also the stipends of doctoral students who are TA’ing undergrads. There’d have to be some allocation of research to undergrads as there would be benefit to them also.
It sounds pretty complicated, because the benefits of all grad programs do benefit undergrads, exclusive of say, the vast majority of stuff at RMC. Additionally, I don’t know how the economies of scale could be adjusted for really small STEM colleges like Cal Tech to medium and large enrollment campuses. JPL is affiliated with the University, so how much of this is included in its costs of educating students, particularly undergrads?
“It sounds pretty complicated, because the benefits of all grad programs do benefit undergrads…”
According to many here on CC, graduate programs are considered a detriment to the overall teaching quality of undergraduates, for a myriad of reasons. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve heard from others here that top rated graduate departments are not all that important to the quality of the undergraduate experience.
@rjkofnovi . . . That wasn’t exactly my point; I was talking more of shared facilities, etc. But I’ve never believed that grad departments take away from teaching of undergrads. I agree that some on this board have questioned Cal’s professors’ ability to teach because they’re supposedly too busy researching (and becoming quite good at winning Nobel prizes). But the grad students, e.g., in their top-ranked Economics Department are undoubtedly some of the best in the country, and of course, this undoubtedly benefits their undergrads with any interaction they have with them.
“But I’ve never believed that grad departments take away from teaching of undergrads.“
Agreed. That is why I made my comment.
^ One of my better classes in undergrad was a small grad-level philosophy seminar.
I certainly can see the appeal of small classes, but they can be found in many places.
@PurpleTitan regarding UT Austin, it gets “no less than” 45% of the payout from the endowment fund (the PUF) to support non-capital programs. University of Texas part of the PUF is about $23B. UT Austin can get more and has been at about 50% in recent years as they have built out the Dell Medical School. Only UT Austin gets funds from the PUF for anything other than supporting capital bonds. Some amount is directed to system administration, but the other 40% or so is divided between the University of Texas campuses to support bonds for capital projects. UT Austin also gets a share of this, which is divided by enrollment headcount, so that is about 9% of the PUF. So all told, UT Austin currently benefits from about 60% of the $23B fund, and it also has an independent endowment of about $4B. So it isn’t a conventional endowment, but it adds up to nearly $18B. That is quite a bit of money, but it has to support 51K students.