<p>A Washington Post article by Jay Mathews suggests that picking the college with the "shiniest toys" is encouraging colleges to spend money on non-essentials and pricing some schools out of the market. He cites an example from a book by Andrew Rosen:</p>
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[quote]
Among many examples [Rosen] cites is the Texas College Climbing Wall War, where Baylor announced plans for a 41-foot wall, but then Texas A&M said it was doing a 44-foot wall so Baylor changed its plan to a 52-foot wall and then the University of Houston built a 53-foot wall. The money gets much more serious when the competition is over new buildings and star professors, neither of which do much for those colleges' success in producing well educated undergraduates.
<p>This isn't exactly a new insight, and I'm sure the cost of a climbing wall is barely a rounding error in the budget of these schools. As Mathews points out, though, when you start competing on the basis of fancy buildings, star faculty, etc., you can spend some real money.</p>
<p>Easy financing has no doubt contributed to the "shiny toy" syndrome. When paying college can be deferred into the misty future, it's easy to choose the school you want instead of the one that will suffice.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if some four-year colleges adopt a conspicuous "no frills" approach to spending and show families significant savings in tuition.</p>
<p>It’s very difficult for many people - including students, parents and faculty - to understand that funding at public universities comes from a variety of sources that are each allocated for certain things. This is not the case at private schools which can spend their own money any way that they choose. Faculty see a building being renovated and say “They’d rather invest in bricks and mortar than in new faculty positions” when in fact, states have repair and renovation funds that can ONLY be used for repair and renovation of existing facilities and cannot be used for operations. Similarly, no state of which I’m aware will spend education and general funds on rec centers or climbing walls. These are generally built with student activity fees which are assessed on a per student basis after the students or their elected representatives approve the new fee.</p>
<p>If all the students at a good-sized university pay $100 per semester, the school can build a Taj Mahal of a fitness center. Many of the students who pay those fees might otherwise pay several times as much to belong to private gyms with a fraction of the facilities and programs. I’d assume that many of the parents who would endorse the “no-frills” approach to college would then foot the bill for their student’s numerous off-campus incidentals without thinking of them as part of the cost of the college experience.</p>
<p>Baylor is a private school with a total enrollment of about 15,000. If all of them paid $200 in a year for a gym, you’d have 3,00,000 which won’t build (or maintain) a Taj of a fitness center.</p>
<p>The students don’t have to pay to belong to private gyms because most schools today provide workout facilities. If they didn’t, some would join gyms and some would not.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see if some four-year colleges adopt a conspicuous “no frills” approach to spending and show families significant savings in tuition.</p>
<p>Rec Centers are almost always built (at all public and many privates) by issuing bonds, say for $70,000,000 as in the case at UIowa. The student fee money only has to pay the yearly mortgage. University of Iowa students will pay a mandatory $235 per year fee that only goes towards the bond. Students will pay the fee until the bond is retired. </p>
<p>Maintenance and other costs are paid for through additional general fund appropriations and departmental revenue sources. </p>
<p>I worked in campus recreation for many years.</p>
<p>@nemom - As noted above, rec centers are built with bonds, which are paid off with student fees assessed for a stated number of years. The $3M per year that a 15,000-student campus would generate from a fee would be collected annually for, say, 20 years to repay the bonds. At my campus, where we opened a 100,000-sq ft rec center last month, many of our students had previously belonged to any of three local gyms. Students had also allocated themselves a fee five years ago to purchase and renovate an old church as student social space using a 20-year bond issuance.</p>
<p>Easy financing has no doubt contributed to the “shiny toy” syndrome. When paying college can be deferred into the misty future, it’s easy to choose the school you want instead of the one that will suffice.</p>
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<p>SO TRUE!!! This is the same line of thinking that led many to purchase homes they could not afford. </p>
<p>And why not buy the shiny toy when it looks like you might just get a bail out down the road …</p>
<p>This reminds me of a thread that occurred on the Wesleyan CC Forum several months ago. An aspiring, recruitable, athlete with a rather exaggerated view of his own desirability as a candidate, had these observations following a swing through some East Coast, so-called, prestige colleges:<br>
<p>I didn’t go into detail how Amherst and Williams both seem to have obsessions with their modernistic main libraries, built during the sixties and seventies, and with tearing them down in favor of “prettier” buildings that better purvey their quaint New England heritages. Nor, did I point out that in neither case would there be a net gain of a single square foot of shelving space. </p>
<p>I also didn’t mention that not too long ago, Amherst tore down two dormitories (Stearns and Williston?) and rebuilt both from scratch with a net <em>loss</em> of total student beds. Why? Because, it was said, students needed more lounge space in order to throw parties (these were freshman dorms, btw.) I did, however, point out that in Amherst’s case at least, they have had to borrow money in order not to dip into the school’s highly illiquid stock portfolio to pay for it all.</p>
<p>If we allowed for a free market in college education, schools would be forced to allocate funds carefully, since they’d have to compete with other schools to offer prospective students the highest quality education at the lowest price possible. Reckless spending like this would stop, and prices would go down, as they do in other industries where the federal government is not involved.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, by providing students with grants and guaranteed federal loans, the government has ensured that schools can raise tuition as high as they like, and will still be able to attract customers. Thus, there is literally no incentive for schools to be careful with spending, or make any attempt to keep prices low for students.</p>
<p>Where is the breaking point? When will students and parents say, “No, that is an exorbitant amount of money and we are no longer interested.”</p>
<p>Is it $70,000?
$80,000?
Tuition at the University of Chicago may be the highest in the country, and they are approaching or above 50,000 in tuition alone. When will this madness stop???</p>
<p>Just to play devil’s advocate, Medwell, I am willing to argue that with respect to:
is theoretically already in place, and that since said programming “quality” is not a tangible, this “edifice complex” is an attempt to lure with tangible evidence of “quality” (or at least amenity). Unfortunately, said consumer is the one choosing the Taj and talking with their (parents’) pocketbooks.</p>
<p>The values/naivety of said starry-eyed consumers need to be adjusted to be ‘college-predator-proof.’ We teach our kids how to identify and ward off sexual predators, but rarely do we remember to teach them criteria by which to make the distinction between artifice and intrinsic value. (Which might be because we ourselves as a society can barely negotiate that one )</p>
<p>It’s a bit slippery due to student aid, but let’s face it – rarely does any fed money do much more than cover a low in-state tuition or perhaps board for the poorest of poor at a zero EFC. Most folks don’t qualify for anything more than the $5500 avail in loans. Federal aid, at least student-side certainly is not driving this abject fiscal squandering in the name of “attracting students.”
But state funding and constant shortfalls/shrinking contributions might motivate some schools to engage in the edifice complex to enjoy an economy of scale in delivery and/or to attract out-of-state students and the tuition premium same supply (eg. UMich resembles that remark these days…but state funding has dwindled to LESS THAN 7% OF ITS OPERATING BUDGET. So yeah, TUITION IS HIGH.)</p>
<p>The town where my son goes to college has several private gyms, pilates and yoga studios, etc. within easy walking distance. I think it’s a fair bet that some students pay to belong to those places, though of course others may choose to use the athletic center. Some people like to work out with classes and so forth that aren’t available through a typical athletic center on a campus. Even back in my day (when few people worked out like today), there were students who belonged to the Nautilus or the YMCA/YWCA.</p>
<p>My son attends CU Boulder. We also live in Boulder. Cu announced last year that they will be renovating their student rec center at a cost of 63.5 million dollars. This will be paid for over the next 25 years by increased student fees of approximately $125 a semester. One of the improvements will in fact be a state of the art climbing gym with bouldering area. This proposal was voted on by students who will never have to pay the additional fees.</p>
<p>As a parent, this made my head explode. We have 300+ days of sunshine a year in Colorado. Our city supports 120+ miles of multi-purpose trails. Our city is criss-crossed with a bike paths. We have a velodrome. There are 2 very well appointed public rec centers, with pools, both easily accessible by bus from the campus. Our city boasts 2 huge climbing gyms plus world class climbing available outside in our local canyons (accessible by bike from campus). You can take a bus from campus and be at our local ski resort in 30 minutes. You can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting a yoga/Pilates/zumba/nia/martial arts class. Add to that a plethora of running, hiking, biking, swimming, and climbing clubs. </p>
<p>Why oh why, in one of the fittest towns in America, should students be expected to shoulder the additional burden of paying for a fancy rec center? It is disgusting. Something needs to be done about the out of control spending.</p>
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