Every time I heard some colleges wanted the students to pay more; either on tuitions, rooms, boards; I always had this question in mind. These colleges have smart people; doctors, professors, even Nobel Laureates; but why can’t they figure out ways to manage costs without having the students to pay more? If you let’s say provide services to company (business-to-business type of deal), you can get paid and use the money to cover costs. Furthermore, some of the money could go towards scholarships and grants.
What is your take on it?
Oh, if only it were so simple. It takes a boatload of money to run a college. I work at a very small college, and I can tell you that it costs a lot to run physical plant, provide necessary technology and technology upgrades, comply with security requirements, comply with a myriad federal requirements, pay for faculty and staff salaries & benefits, provide necessary maintenance & upgrades to campus/buildings/dorms/parking lots, etc., etc., etc. Costs increase regularly, and as technology moves forward, costs increase in this area. Mental health is an increasing challenge on college campuses, requiring additional costs. For public schools, financial support from states has decreased in recent years.
There are ways to deal with the rising costs other than tuition increases, but those are relatively limited: Deferred maintenance (which is really just kicking the can down the road), increased online course offerings, closing branch campuses, increasing use of adjuncts and grad assistants rather than full professors, consolidating schools and/or consolidating things like purchasing with other schools, privatizing services such as janitorial, and the biggie … raising more endowment. Not all of these work for all schools, and not all of these necessarily solves the financial issues. It is very complex.
Education is a labor intensive industry that doesn’t benefit from technological improvement If a professor could teach 100 students/year in 1978, how many can they teach today? 100. Compare that to a factory worker that could produce 1,000 widgets in 1978. That same worker can now produce 2,500 widgets due to technology. If you want to keep your 9:1 student to facility ratio, cost are going to increase faster than inflation.
What types of services could colleges offer? The mission of colleges is to teach. If they offered classes to outside entities – which they can’t unless they pay professors more for teaching more credits than they’re contractually required to teach – it’s going to cost them money. I don’t think they could turn a meaningful profit. Staff can’t provide services without getting paid overtime. There’s not likely much profit to be had there even if you could persuade people to work overtime. Colleges could rent out their facilities but that requires staff to set up, stay on site during the event, and clean up. If it’s inside, especially during breaks when a lot of buildings close down, lights and AC/heat that would be off or on minimal settings would be on full power. I don’t think they’d make very much money doing that either.