<p>When comparing s/f ratios, it cannot be done independently of tuition charged...which varies significantly between the schools listed. What if the s/f ratio was normalized to in-state tuition...what would the list look like?</p>
<p>Bedhead,
Please understand that I’m not making any value judgments about the role of public universities and the balancing act that they have in providing higher education to a broad swath of their constituents while still competing with private colleges across the country. In fact, for students considering colleges outside of the elite tier, I think that the publics compete pretty effectively and that the financial argument for many private colleges is challenging. </p>
<p>However, for those public universities that want to compete nationally against the top privates for undergraduate students, these “dying” trends, whether for cities or for the states in which they are located, are real and force even harder allocation choices on the college administrations. In some instances, eg, California and the other states with very low OOS numbers, this is less of a problem. For IS California students, places like UCB, UCLA, UCSD, etc. are compelling, low-cost choices that make the student choice of public vs private less difficult. </p>
<p>For colleges with meaningful numbers of OOS students, eg, U Virginia-U Michigan, the public-private model that bclinton referred to looks increasingly necessary. In cases like Michigan where the economy is in the tank and recovery is uncertain, I would say that this is even more acute of a problem. For Virginia, my perception is that the state politicians have screwed it up with irresponsible spending/budgeting, even while their state tax revenues have benefited from the huge growth of the federal government/defense/tech industry that is physically located in northern Virginia. </p>
<p>One unhappy consequence of these trends is the financial aid impact on students. With the ongoing increases in tuition and the increased numbers of students going to college, this is a situation that lends itself to a squeeze.</p>
<p>Hawkette:</p>
<p>While your points maybe logical, they are not necessarily supported by the data. For example, UVa has increased finaid significantly in the past few years, and is one of the few publics that provides good need-based aid to kids from OOS. Also, if you want to use s/f ratio to support your post (and forbes) then you need to show a trend, say the last 10 years of s/f ratios and compare to state funding to higher ed. Finally, while I don't know about the UF schools, I know those UCs (and ASU) at the top of your lists are rapidly growing campuses. It is likely that the s/f is a lagging indicator for any rapidly growing campus (including privates) -- admin waits until the students show up before hiring more tenure-track faculty. In contrast, Cal and UCLA are not adding any undergrads. Also, ASU provides 'scholarships' to OOS students to offset the OOS portion of their tuition, so they must not be hurting too badly financially.</p>
<p>btw: the folks running UMich aren't dumb. They easily saw the demographic decline coming a decade ago (the teacher layoffs in Detroit -- due to declining enrollment -- are constant national news), which (may be?) why they enroll so many full-pay kids from OOS.</p>
<p>^^What do you consider a low endowment?</p>
<p>Under $1 Billion for a public university and $3 Billion for a private university.</p>
<p>How many private universities have endowments over 3 billion? Are you saying all the rest are flirting with going under?
dstark, do you agree?</p>
<p>No. I don't agree that private universities with endowments under $3 billion are going under, if that is what you are asking.</p>
<p>I don't think Barrons is really saying that.</p>
<p>Rather than a number like 3 billion can you suggest a $ per student number for endowment that shows financial strength?</p>
<p>dstark wrote:
[quote]
There are going to be many private colleges that find themselves in trouble.
The better known public universities will be fine.</p>
<p>The private colleges with low endowments and/or need high tuition dollars....Ouch.</p>
<p>Better get some rich foreign students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>dstark -- I was originally asking about this post of yours but my post was far removed from the original. You say privates with "low endowments . . . ouch." What do you define as a low endowment?</p>
<p>I think the biggest problem with the "dying states" is keeping students in town after they graduate. States like Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, etc. have good public universities that attract OOS students. BUT - the lack of jobs in these states means that students have little incentive to stay after they graduate. </p>
<p>Schools in boom cities like Austin, Houston, Atlanta, etc. have the benefit of being able to churn out enough jobs to satisfy many of the graduates. This is somewhat of an advantage.</p>
<p>Another great post, BedHead!</p>
<p>Madison itself has become something of a boom city with a growing number of large and small tech and biotech firms and med centers. Milwaukee--has some stuff but not the buzz. Many still head down to Chicago for the most opportunities and then later by the lake cabin up in Wisconsin.</p>
<p>dbwes, I don't want to get that specific. I don't know what the magic number is as far as endowments go. It's a little more complicated than that. It's just my opinion that there are schools that aren't in great financial shape. </p>
<p>There are schools that have trouble filling up their classes.
I don't remember the link but somebody will have it. </p>
<p>If you are interested in the top 50 schools you will be ok in my opinion. I would say over 100, but wasn't Antioch a top 100 school?</p>
<p>I just look at the cost of private schools, the fact that people are tightening their belts, some schools have trouble getting students now, some schools don't have large endowments and depend on tuition dollars to keep the school running, the cost of running a school keeps going up, and the amount of American kids that are college age are peaking. Looks like a recipe for trouble to me.</p>
<p>A billion dollar endowment looks pretty good to me. </p>
<p>Schools with $1 billion dollar endowments aren't going under. My guess is the number is well under $50 million. (Size of the school matters).</p>
<p>If you are really concerned, ask a school what its credit ranking is. (Not perfect, but will give you an idea).</p>
<p>Worsening</a> Economy Could Cause Trouble for Smaller Colleges (The Chronicle of Higher Education)</p>
<p>In</a> Slumping Economy, Colleges Forced to Keep Enrollment Numbers Up - MarketWatch</p>
<p>What gets overlooked in the discussion of declining state economies (far more important than city economies, for the reasons stated above) is that it really makes a difference to a public university how much of its budget comes from the state. The University of Michigan currently gets about 10% of its annual revenues from the state of Michigan---down from about 70% in the mid-1960s. If you're at 10% and you take a 10% cut from the legislature, it affects 1% of your budget: belt-tightening, to be sure, but not a fundamental threat. If you're at 70% and you take a 10% hit, that's 7% of your budget, enough to create real chaos.</p>
<p>The point is, Michigan's economy has been in decline for 40 years or so, and highly cyclical even when not in decline. The University of Michigan has long since learned to make the major adjustments necessary to address that financial uncertainty. So hawkette's "sky is falling" horror stories about declining local economies are really quite irrelevant. Sure, the University of Michigan would benefit from a robust and stable state economy which would consistently produce more tax revenue and possibly (depending on who's in power) put the legislature in a more generous mood. But the highly cyclical nature of Michigan's economy forced the University to wean itself from an appropriations-dependent budget model a long time ago. There's a reason Michigan now has one of the largest endowments in the country: it was (and is) an absolute necessity. Many other publics are 20-30 years behind in figuring that out.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the colleges most at risk are small-endowment, high-tuition private colleges and universities, some of which could see real declines in enrollment and tuition revenue in the current economic downturn as cash-strapped families turn to low-tuition public alternatives, including low-cost community colleges to get their kids through the first two years of college without mortgaging away their families' financial futures.</p>
<p>Bc,
I didn’t write the article and I’m not making this stuff up. The economies of Ohio and Michigan stink and this has real budgetary impact in their statehouses and the way that they fund institutions of higher education. Attack the messenger if you like, but the fact remains that money is getting scarcer and scarcer. </p>
<p>In a macro discussion of endowments, I agree that the lower ranked private colleges with smaller endowments face some challenges ahead. However, at the top of the college pyramid, there appears to be more and more financial separation. I don’t know where the divining line is, but as in any dire economic situation, it’s better to have more resources to draw on than not. For many publics located in states with declining fortunes, this squeeze is real.</p>
<p>Here are the endowments per capita based on the NACUBO data from 6/30/07 for many public and private colleges and LACs. These numbers may change meaningfully in the next publication of endowment size as the markets have been lousy for the past year and differences in investment performance are likely to surface.</p>
<p>One key consideration in these numbers is that they assign equal claim on college endowments by undergraduate and graduate students. I think that we would all agree that the per capita financial requirements for many graduate programs far exceed those for undergrads. As a result, some of these endowment per capita numbers may reflect a rosier picture than is justified for schools that have large graduate programs. </p>
<p>Endowment Per Capita , College</p>
<p>$2,331,935 , Princeton
$2,212,096 , Yale
$2,070,846 , Harvard
,<br>
$1,139,742 , Pomona
$1,038,883 , Grinnell
$1,008,724 , Amherst</p>
<p>$973,414 , MIT
$971,181 , Swarthmore
$923,404 , Williams
$907,589 , Rice
$891,684 , Cal Tech
$867,677 , Stanford</p>
<p>$714,653 , Wellesley
$642,885 , Dartmouth
$583,046 , U Chicago
$544,297 , Notre Dame
$542,086 , U Richmond
$518,529 , Emory
$506,017 , Duke
$500,171 , Smith</p>
<p>$482,351 , Bowdoin
$469,546 , Yeshiva
$461,582 , Haverford
$460,114 , Wash U StL
$417,641 , Claremont McKenna
$407,041 , Northwestern</p>
<p>$389,650 , W&L
$380,928 , Hamilton
$374,542 , Middlebury
$354,599 , Vassar
$353,879 , Harvey Mudd</p>
<p>$340,159 , Brown
$330,923 , Carleton
$324,352 , U Texas
$310,861 , Columbia</p>
<p>$295,580 , U Penn
$295,487 , Oberlin
$294,378 , Vanderbilt
$287,647 , Davidson
$273,976 , Cornell
$252,325 , Wesleyan
$250,458 , Colgate</p>
<p>$229,924 , Case Western
$218,113 , Wake Forest
$204,467 , U Rochester</p>
<p>$182,145 , Tufts
$180,163 , U Virginia
$172,746 , U Michigan
$158,303 , Lehigh</p>
<p>$147,388 , J Hopkins
$143,152 , Texas A&M
$130,128 , Brandeis
$129,184 , Boston College
$122,617 , SMU
$121,101 , USC
$114,181 , Tulane
$110,251 , Carnegie Mellon
$109,377 , Rensselaer
$106,603 , Pepperdine
$101,612 , UC Berkeley</p>
<p>$93,392 , Georgetown
$90,175 , U Pittsburgh
$86,489 , G. Washington
$85,288 , U North Carolina
$82,591 , W & M
$77,383 , UCLA
$76,006 , Baylor
$71,430 , Georgia Tech
$70,788 , U Delaware
$64,640 , Syracuse
$59,366 , U Minnesota
$58,837 , U Nebraska
$57,907 , U Washington
$57,737 , NYU
$54,179 , U Miami FL</p>
<p>$48,311 , UC Davis
$48,147 , Ohio State
$46,657 , Purdue
$45,145 , U Kansas
$42,999 , U Alabama
$42,376 , UCSD
$42,308 , U Wisconsin
$40,899 , Indiana U
$40,435 , U Missouri
$37,156 , Penn State
$36,939 , U Illinois UC
$36,773 , Boston Univ
$34,715 , UC S Cruz
$34,668 , UC Irvine
$33,678 , UC S Barbara
$31,394 , U Maryland
$28,409 , Michigan St
$26,188 , U Florida
$24,426 , U Georgia
$24,383 , Rutgers</p>
<p>Hawkette, obviously the larger the per capita numbers are, the better, all other things being equal. At least up to a certain point where it doesn't matter. But all other things aren't equal. I don't know of any top school that spends $2 million per student, do you? Don't schools spend around 5% of the endowment per year. That hardly equals the numbers you wrote? Don't schools have restrictions on the endowments and of that 5%, some of that money doesn't really get to the students?</p>
<p>Also, you don't have revenues from other sources with those numbers. Don't you think those other numbers are relevant too? You don't have economy of scale. Don't you think those numbers are relevant too? If you don't have those numbers, that's fine. But that doesn't make those numbers less relevant.
You also don't have how much it costs to keep each school running every year. That's kind of relevant too.</p>
<p>"Bc,
I didn’t write the article and I’m not making this stuff up. The economies of Ohio and Michigan stink and this has real budgetary impact in their statehouses and the way that they fund institutions of higher education."</p>
<p>No Hawkette, you didn't make up the numbers. But as bclintonk wrote, if an institition gets 10% of its budget from a source and that source cuts back 10%, that is only a 1% decline. </p>
<p>Hardly dire.</p>
<p>Schools like Michigan and Virginia, have already adjusted for lower state revenues. So declining state revenues are not the problem they could be. </p>
<p>bclintonk is right.</p>
<p>When I look at your list, the schools that stand out to me are NYU and BU. No wonder it is so expensive to go to these schools. (I'm not saying they are in trouble).</p>
<p>dstark,
Feel free to do a little of the lifting and researching some of this stuff. :) </p>
<p>The point of the original article is that a lot of cities are dying. I extrapolated the thought to their states and their budgetary implications. It's not always a straight line and certainly some colleges have prepared better than others. </p>
<p>As for the cost impact at the schools, consider the following costs for several publics. For those public schools that wish to play at the highest levels and compete for top students nationally, what scope do you believe they have for increasing their tuition prices, not to mention their ability to increase their financial aid? </p>
<p>IS Tuition, OOS Tuition, Public College</p>
<p>$10,341 , $30,154 , U Michigan
$8,500 , $27,750 , U Virginia
$8,384 , $27,452 , UC Berkeley
$8,109 , $27,177 , UC Davis
$7,556 , $27,176 , UC Irvine
$7,896 , $26,964 , UC S Barbara
$9,164 , $26,725 , W & M
$7,034 , $26,102 , UCLA
$7,670 , $24,544 , U Texas
$10,503 , $23,896 , U Illinois UC
$12,844 , $23,712 , Penn State
$6,385 , $22,131 , U Washington
$8,808 , $21,438 , U Wisconsin
$5,234 , $21,348 , Georgia Tech
$5,340 , $20,988 , U North Carolina
$8,305 , $19,917 , UCSD
$3,256 , $17,841 , U Florida</p>
<p>I think those tuitions are high enough already.</p>
<p>Many of those schools aren't having trouble getting top students so let's be real and let's not make up problems that don't exist. ;)</p>
<p>Actually, even the OOS yields of top publics would tell you that the publics struggle somewhat, at least compared to the top privates. </p>
<p>If the public colleges want to retain even that level of attractiveness, money issues will certainly play a role. Fortunately, the leadership at some of these top publics aren't treating this as a "problem that doesn't exist." At the highest levels, eg, these colleges know that for the USNWR Top 20-40 national universities and USNWR Top 20 LACs, the college arms race is not likely to slow down a whole lot.</p>
<p>The "arms race" is not going to stop hawkette. It doesn't matter how flush the schools get. The arms race isn't just happening because of financial problems. I don't think Harvard has any financial problems, but the school still wants more money. The same with Yale, Princeton and all the other schools.</p>
<p>The "arms race" is good for the schools. Then the schools can go out to the marketplace and ask for more money. More and more money. Money to pay for more.....more facilities. More departments. Higher pay. Etc.</p>
<p>You can never have enough money. At least if you are a school.</p>