<p>Bay, I would disagree for many reasons but mostly, I would argue that a student at a LAC has better opportunities for a better education, and the rest should follow.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t believe the 93,000 figure because it isn’t true…</p>
<p>If it was true…schools wouldn’t increase enrollment to make more money…because they supposedly lose on each student they educate…</p>
<p>Must be a lot of fixed costs in that 93,000 number…</p>
<p>[Williams</a> Stuffs Students Into Dorms as Economy Pares Endowments - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>"Wesleyan University plans to add 120 students to help shore up finances after its endowment fell 22 percent, an indication the recession is forcing doors to open a bit wider at top-rated U.S. colleges.</p>
<p>The extra enrollees, an increase of about 4 percent for the college in Middletown, Connecticut, will arrive during the next four years and bring about $4.7 million in new revenue, said David Pesci, a university spokesman. To accommodate the addition, Wesleyan will convert some dormitory rooms to double or triple occupancy, he said.</p>
<p>Experiencing investment losses, Amherst College, Cornell University, Johns Hopkins University and Bowdoin College are also planning to increase student populations, according to the schools’ admissions and public-relations officials. The institutions gain income because the expansions generally don’t require new buildings or faculty, said Michael McPherson, president of the Chicago-based Spencer Foundation, which funds education research.</p>
<p>“What a lot of places seem to be doing in response to the current economic situation is easing up on the supply of places by letting in a few more kids,” said McPherson, formerly president of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. “If there is a little bit less luxury in the way things are provided, I think that’s a good tradeoff.”</p>
<p>The plans to seat more students are the latest indication of financial turmoil that has unsettled colleges, students and their parents since the economic crisis began last year, said Morton Schapiro, an economist and president of Williams College, which plans to enlarge its class by 10 students for the next academic year.</p>
<p>“Schools are looking to augment revenue to replace the amount of money they take from the endowment,” said Schapiro. “If the market hadn’t tumbled, they probably wouldn’t be looking there.” "</p>
<p>As to how tuition is set and the true costs of educating a student, this provides some interesting thoughts:</p>
<p><a href=“The Price of Perception - The New York Times”>The Price of Perception - The New York Times;
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<p>It’s not astounding as it just prove that these numbers are made up and admission is not fair. If it is completely fair then the % of everything should actually swing randomly from year to year.</p>
<p>So everything has a %quota including the need blind admissions. Colleges have to balance need blind admission against the full payee so as to balance their budget. What ever way you may slice it, full payee admisisons do subsidized need blind admissions.</p>
<p>It’s same as top 10% Tax payer pays for most of the social services in USA.</p>
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<p>Apparently the former president of a top LAC agrees with you.</p>
<p>If you argue that full
Pay subsidizes needy students then the cost to educate must actually be less than tuition - in that case the expenditures seem more
In line with a publicly funded college-</p>
<p>Sent from my iPhone using CC</p>
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<p>That is my thought.</p>
<p>Dartmouth increased its enrollment to help close a budget shortfall.</p>
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<p>Depend what you consider as cost to educate. The true cost to educate at UCB and Stanford per student should be approximately same while the quality might not be. The reason might be that in order to generate the same amount of revenue UCB need to enroll more students there by reducing the quality of education.</p>
<p>There are lots of fixed costs associated with colleges which has nothing to do with the education of the student and should not be considered as part of it. So a true cost of educating student is certainly less than sticker price of the private otherwise how public universities are able to deliver it.</p>
<p>The sticker price at private is high to subsidized need blind admissions and to maintain a better quality than the public universities.</p>
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<p>I think you answered your own question, but the issue is marginal cost versus average cost. Marginal cost is well below average, which is why addng students may alleviate a budget crunch even if they “lose money” on every student. </p>
<p>I just looked at the ipeds data. For 2009, Williams listed total expenses of just over $180 million and an undergraduate student body of just over 2000. That works out to about $90,000 per student.</p>
<p>[IPEDS</a> Data Center](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Facsimile.aspx?unitid=acb1b3aeafad]IPEDS”>http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Facsimile.aspx?unitid=acb1b3aeafad)</p>
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<p>
Henry E. Riggs is president emeritus of Harvey Mudd College</p>
<p>Coase:</p>
<p>According to IPEDS the MIT expenditure on Instruction for 2009</p>
<p>Instruction 589,481,000 25.01% 57,946
Student services 67,957,000 2.88% 6,680 </p>
<p>is $57,946 + $6680 ~ $65K</p>
<p>Glad to know that Williams expenses works out to be $90,000. </p>
<p>Even the MIT numbers include fixed cost for Buildings/dorms so you can easily imagine that there $50K (Tutition + dorm + Fees) easily comes down to less than cost of educating students.</p>
<p>[IPEDS</a> Data Center](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Snapshotx.aspx?unitId=acb1b1b1b3ae]IPEDS”>http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Snapshotx.aspx?unitId=acb1b1b1b3ae)</p>
<p>What’s kind of lousy is that full pays can get somewhat lesser “advantages” at the school than the FA kids. Funds for study abroad, for example. It kind of slayed us that on top of the $52K we were paying for our kid that after filling out an enormous form for for study abroad he was given a whopping $600 for a $10,000 international “experience.” While the students on FA seemed to do study abroad after study abroad . . . oh well. I guesssss we could have afforded to foot the bill for study abroad, too, but it was beyond our tolerance level. Also, there were some campus jobs for professors son pursued and was told that because he wasn’t on FA, he was sort of last in line for consideration. This was very much true for the more plebian jobs like the library and so forth. He was able to earn money as a tutor though – no criteria for FA for that.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that full pay kids should get better treatment. It would be nice if they could get equivalent treatment. And in some ways they don’t.</p>
<p>Now I’ll probably get a lot of scoldings on how I really could have afforded that summer in Venice, etc, because I"m a slime ball!</p>
<p>It isn’t a big deal really but it stings a little.</p>
<p>“If you argue that full Pay subsidizes needy students then the cost to educate must actually be less than tuition”</p>
<p>Full pay students subsidize the needy students’ drain on the school’s endowment (both draw on the endowment). The cost of education still exceeds full payment.</p>
<p>FWIW – I think they should not impose an arbitrary cutoff for FA. I think if they are going for a “progressive” cost structure they should just charge a certain percentage of income with no cutoffs. That way the true billionaire’s kid would pay a lot more than the typical double income professionals’ kid. In fact, I’d imagine the resulting proceeds would be a good deal greater and perhaps the endowment would be even more robust and overall tuition for most kids could go down.</p>
<p>It can feel if you are just across the line on FA as if you are sort of the petit bourgeoise and somewhat disdained and punished.</p>
<p>^^^: Not a bad idea, I’ll second it. Every one end up paying the same % share of their income and not that 10% of income upto a certain cut off level and then full payee.</p>
<p>That would have been true if the full payee students are not subsidizing the cost of need based students.</p>
<p>University have to draw a line to balance how much subsidy they can afford based on how many full payee they are going to get.</p>
<p>sewhappy, have you ever heard the mantra “to whom much has been given, much is expected”? Or noblesse oblige?</p>
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<p>The above does not seem to be the case from my observation of most full-pay undergrads at my college and on other campuses and what friends who are Profs and TAs on various elite university campuses…including a couple of Ivies. </p>
<p>If anything, what I kept seeing and hearing was that it was the full-pay kids who were much more likely to consistently slack off, party hard, and/or get stoned/drunk* from 2 years till graduation/flunking out precisely because they could count on the bank of mom & dad and/or the almighty trust fund. One Ivy Prof told me the worst students she’s had in her 20+ years on campus tended to be legacies/full-pay students with entitlement complexes and athletes. </p>
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<li>Other than my disinterest was also the fact that most of us FA/scholarship kids don’t have that kind of money to throw around for frequent parties and alcohol/drugs like most full-pay kids I saw/heard about. Moreover, the risk of losing that scholarship/FA and being expelled was sufficiently high enough to focus us on our true purpose/priorities of attending [insert name of elite private college/uni]…</li>
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<p>I see a difference between work-study (which is part of FA) and part-time work. I also see a difference between campuses where minimum-wage-type jobs are available for all who want them, and campuses where there are far more students looking for part-time work than there are positions. My general (incorrect?) impression is that there is plenty of part-time work at the more selective schools. That’s probably due to having FA packages that meet need and have no loans.</p>
<p>D1’s school sends out info about part-time jobs in dining services and the like. I’d like D1 (who is full-pay) to take on one of those at some point, and not just for the value of having some additional spending money. A friend whose D was being courted by Bryn Mawr told me that one of the things that she, as a mom, liked about BM was their insistance that all students have a part-time job. </p>
<p>Everyone paying a percentage is a nice idea (says this full-pay parent, wistfully), but it’s only a handful of schools that could afford to implement it and keep the COA price from going up for low-income families.</p>
<p>an acquaintance explained to me her theory that since her child’s tuition was paying for two (??) FA kids, she really should be able to help select those FA admitees…</p>
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It may have something to do with how close the parents are to that full pay threshold, and how much it stings them to pay it, along with just the character of the kid.</p>
<p>A kid whose parents have to struggle a bit to pay the bill, assuming he or she is considerate, would possibly value the education, or feel more urgency about it than Warren Buffet’s kid. I think that’s logical, especially if they have another sibling coming along. That’s how my niece was - she wanted to finish strongly, but as soon as she could to free up some family funds. Maybe that was also part of sewhappy’s kid’s thought process in finishing up fast (aside from just not being in love with the school).</p>