<p>it's funny that you mention the winning sports thing. one thing about my college is that we don't have a football team. that really cuts down on costs associated with schools. the funny thing is, we have these shirts and hats that are sold in the bookstore, and they say football undefeated since 1787 (which is when our school was started). people ALWAYS turn and ask whenever I wear my shirt - and then i nicely tell them that we simply don't have a football team (no wins either!). they laugh a lot.</p>
<p>Patuxent - you're economic analogies are hysterical. That being said, I'm not sure the market is the only factor at work. Believe it or not, colleges and universities don't like to raise tuition any more than they have to. Colleges and Universities are not-for-profit organizations and their motives are not profit-driven. If Harvard wanted to, they probably could raise tuition to $100,000 a year and people would still line up to pay, but Harvard wants to keep tuition as affordable as possible. You might argue that some schools have large enough endowments that they could be tuition-free. But most schools have a policy of not using their endowments to pay ordinary operating expenses. Endowments are for the future.<br>
Lots of colleges, and especially state universities, have been forced to implement huge increases over the past couple of years. States have been cutting higher education budgets, and many schools are facing huge "deferred maintenance" expenses, i.e. they've been ignoring their buildings for too long, and now they have to repair or replace them.
More than in private industry, I think college tuition increases are cost-, not market-, driven.</p>
<p>Also...I sort of resent that Grinnell gets labeled in the middle of nowhere more than other schools -- Colby, Colgate, Bates, Middlebury, Hamilton... are just as much in the middle of nowhere as Grinnell. We found Colby to be incredibly isolated - Grinnell is 50 min from a decent airport. Colby is 1-1/2 hours. Grinnell is also 50 minutes from a decent-sized college town, Iowa City (28,000 students) and DesMoines (population 500,000 in the metropolitan area). I think there is a tendency to think isolation in the midwest is somehow worse than isolation in the east. The fact is that lots of LACs are located in small towns that have nothing to offer for the students at the college, and Grinnell is no worse than many others in this regard.</p>
<p>SBmom - a cartel is a cartel. If telecoms or the airlines or the auto companies all got together and decided they would charge one price to the rich and a different price to the poor and a third price to the middle class we would put them in jail. When a college president says the costs of education are going up what he really means is that he wants to buy more stuff not that it costs more to teach differential calculus to undergraduates this year than last. There is nothing wrong with that per se so long as he is operating in an open competitive market. if he raises prices too steeply because he wants too much stuff then in a free market he will loose market share and eventually his school or his job. On the other hand in a cartel he will simply go to his chief competitors and tell them - hey my pockets are not as deep as your and I want a nuclear reactor too. Lets all raise prices so I can buy my reactor and not loose market share.</p>
<p>There really isn't much difference between what the elite schools and often not so elite ones do and what OPEC does. Try for a minute to imagine walking into a car dealership and telling the saleman, "I want to buy a Honda how much does it cost?" </p>
<p>He replies, "Well how much do you make and how much is your house worth and what does your 401K look like and oh yeah I need to see your tax return and also could you stand next to this brown paper bag I need to see where you fall on the diversity scale because I don't have one price for the car - I base it on how much I think you can afford to pay and a bunch of other factors like race creed and sexual orientation." </p>
<p>Indignantly you reply, "What the heck kind of BS is that I am going to take my business down the street and buy a Mazda!" </p>
<p>To which he replies, "Go ahead but the Mazda will cost the same even though its not as good as our Hondas because we have an agreement not to compete with each other on price. Oh and the used Yugo from that dealer across town will also cost the same. It is a really sucky car but he is in our atheletic conference too and none of us competes on price."</p>
<p>There are very good state schools-- UCs, UVa, UMich, etc-- that are in the uppermost tier-- and <em>do</em> compete on price; if you live in Calif, a UC will cost you half of what Ivy or a top 25 LAC costs. Yet many people still pick the private schools.</p>
<p>I would say the high 'fixed' price gets you a BMW, Mercedes, etc maybe down to a Saab or an Audi... A Ford school is much more reasonable & by Yugo, you've got a deal. Then there are the cars with ads on them that (in Calif) you are subsidized to buy.</p>
<p>Similarly, if you are willing to attend a less selective or less nationally prominent LAC you can get merit aid. So you need to add a category: smart people also get to pay less at some schools. :).</p>
<p>topcat - I didn't mean to denigrate Grinnell. It is an excellent school and no more isolated than many other small liberal arts colleges...well maybe a little more. But seriously my point was that you would think Grinnell's operating costs might be a little lower than Macalester's in the twin cities but apparently not.</p>
<p>As for the state universities yes they are getting squeezed. I know my state flagship campus has been force to up tuition significantly. Of course that hasn't stopped them from building a new fieldhouse and expanding the football stadium or doing many and another things necessary for them to remain competitive with UNC and UVa and Georgia Tech or any of the other schools they compete with academically and atheletically. How much of that stuff is necessary? I guess all of it by the administrations reckoning and whatever they say is necessary is part of the cost of educating a student.</p>
<p>I just have to correct egregiously incorrect information posted earlier.</p>
<p>The comprehensive fee (tuition, room & board, fees) for 2004-2005 for Harvard, Grinnell and Macalester is really the following:</p>
<p>Grinnell - $32,690 (<a href="http://www.grinnell.edu/admission/tuifees/%5B/url%5D">http://www.grinnell.edu/admission/tuifees/</a>)
Macalester - $34,156 (<a href="http://www.macalester.edu/admissions/quick_facts.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.macalester.edu/admissions/quick_facts.html</a>)
Harvard - $39,880 (<a href="http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/financial_aid/costs/%5B/url%5D">http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/prospective/financial_aid/costs/</a>)</p>
<p>Plus, you may also want to read the following article which ran in the Mpls Star Tribune and the issues Macalester (like all colleges) is facing concerning financial aid and doing what is best for their students and what is best for the institution. There are tough choices and decisions being made every day.</p>
<p>Macalester to limit student financial aid
Dan Wascoe
Star Tribune
Published January 12, 2005 </p>
<p>Reversing a long-standing tradition, Macalester College will start limiting the amount of financial aid it gives to incoming students.</p>
<p>The change will apply to freshmen entering the private St. Paul school in 2006. It will not affect current students. The college's trustees voted unanimously for the change during a retreat last weekend.</p>
<p>Although the amount has not been set, President Brian Rosenberg said the number of students receiving less aid will be 15 to 30 from an incoming class of about 500. The school's full-time enrollment is 1,845 students.</p>
<p>The college has been considering some change in its aid policy for a decade, he said. Increases in salaries, insurance premiums and other expenses have risen faster than proceeds from the school's endowment. Faltering stock-market returns shrank that endowment from a peak of $570 million to $400 million, he added.</p>
<p>The financial aid budget, once approved a year from now, probably will be used to fully meet the financial needs of the most highly qualified students, Rosenberg said. But when the budget is depleted, applicants "at the margins" of the incoming class will be affected. He said that the college received about 4,500 applications last year for 500 spots.</p>
<p>In the months before the vote, students and alumni who opposed the change said reducing aid would violate a core Macalester value. The school is the only remaining Minnesota college to admit students regardless of their ability to pay for their education. The average Macalester student got almost $21,000 in aid toward a tuition, room and board bill of $31,944 last year.</p>
<p>College officials said earlier that current policy required the school to use $22 million of its $24 million in endowment proceeds for financial aid this year. The policy has left diminishing amounts for other needs, they said, arguing that Macalester's quality -- class size, faculty pay, building upkeep -- would suffer unless changes were made.</p>
<p>St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., also stirred student and alumni anger this year when it sold the campus radio station, WCAL-FM, to Minnesota Public Radio. College officials said the sale was required to boost the college's endowment in light of rising costs.</p>
<p>Rosenberg said Macalester will remain a college that "does believe in access and a diverse population," even though the revised aid policy will mean that the number of students receiving aid "might fluctuate from year to year."</p>
<p>Patuxent, your facts aren't even right. Not all schools use the same methodology. Not only are there two completely different methodologies school can choose from, they are also free to make individual chanages to the overall formulas OR to the results for various families.</p>
<p>Also, at some colleges the athletic budget is entirely separate from the rest of the budget. NOT building a new fieldhouse is not going to free up dollars for more financial aid or to lower tuition. </p>
<p>I find it remarkable that you reduce tuition increases to "College president wanting to buy more stuff." That's far too simplistic. </p>
<p>You're trying to make all of these issues far more simple than they actually are.</p>
<p>As for self-supporting atheletic departments you might want to take a look at the following document page 22. In fact it has a wealth of information on where universities get their money and where the spend. The focus is research institutions not LAC's. It is a much more interesting and informative ranking than what you will get from newspapers or magazines.</p>
<p><a href="http://thecenter.ufl.edu/research2003.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://thecenter.ufl.edu/research2003.pdf</a></p>
<p>If my tuition and room, board and mandatory fees numbers were off I apologize. numbers were a little off on tuition I apologize. But as Dan Rather would say you still aren't addressing the my charges....</p>
<p>Serious question for SBmom - Do you think you can get a better undergraduate education at Swarthmore or Duke? What does all that stuff college presidents want from hospitals to stadiums to their own forests really add to the undergraduates education? Is a Swarthmor less valuable than a Duke education because they don't have a huge fieldhouse and division 1A sports program or their own hospital and their own forest?</p>
<p>Honestly I think you can get a better education at Swarthmore, but that doesn't mean much on grand scale-- I am not the rah-rah type, so Duke's unique features wouldn't mean anything to me. Who knows, if I was the rah-rah type I might pick Duke. </p>
<p>There <em>is</em> something intellectually valuable about the physical splendor of the Duke campus, however. It is an absolutely incredible spot and it is very inspiring. While I may not care a whit about sports, I do have a profound gut emotional response to my physical environment and have had this all my life. There are people for whom it can be very important. For example, poetry was always my thing and let me tell you I wrote 10x the poetry when I lived in Paris than when I lived in LA. So I might pick Duke over NYU or Columbia for no good academic reason other than the beauty of the place fueling my emotional/intellectual engine.</p>
<p>Different strokes-- find your "match"... Why should it bug anyone that other people pick differently? Duke is as viable a choice as Swarthmore if it is the place you will thrive.</p>
<p>BTW: I visited Duke only one time, not to ponder the big poetic questions but to see the Grateful Dead perform :)</p>
<p>Well I've only been to Duke once too. Campus was pretty in a country club sort of way with a lot of faux gothic. Went bike riding for an hour or so. Had a late lunch at the student union. The iced tea was way too sweet and had to listen to a young co-ed arguing on the cell phone whether it was better to get a new Honda or a used Lexus. She prefered the Lexus because she said it was more prestigious. Well I'm old and as they say the "The times they are a changin'.." - just maybe not the way we planned.</p>
<p>Anyway my point was having one more gargoyle on you faux gothic cathedral may be nice but isn't necessary so when I hear a college president say he needs to raise tuition at several times the CPI every year I have to wonder if he isn't guilding the lilly a little.</p>