<p>From UW itself. Actually, the shift there is more drastic, as they have been trying to attract OOS transfers (with small merit scholarships) and have restricted the number of low-income community college entrants (many of whom can't afford it anyway.) There is also a shift on in Georgia (Hope Scholarships), and in North Carolina, where, now, only 32.5% of students qualify for "need-based" aid (even though they have done an excellent job of meeting the need of these students, much better than in my state.)</p>
<p>Here is a quote from the University of California's systemwide website:</p>
<p>
[quote]
UC has financing options available to students at all income levels. Nearly two-thirds of UC undergraduates receive some form of financial aid, and UC enrolls more lower income students that any comparable university in the nation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>"Because the subject of this forum is "Colleges Face Challenge of the Class Divide", and it was supposed to be about Amherst."</p>
<p>Oh. That is why we are talking about Swat. :)</p>
<p>mini,</p>
<p>Just a theory on what's happening at UW from a Californian's perspective. Admission to the UCs have become extremely competitive (again, from a pure population numbers standpoint, the chances for an average California kid to gain admittance has decreased substantially, except to perhaps one or two campuses whose locations/amenities are considered unattractive to many).</p>
<p>Many families feel forced to look at privates or outside the state. OOS tuition is pretty comparable to the obscene cost of privates, and I have heard that UW is a very attractive alternative to many Cal kids, who seek an atmosphere comparable to UCLA or Cal, but can't get in there.</p>
<p>Just an observation, for what its worth.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see what happens once the baby boomlet starts to recede. There has been a steady increase in HS grads since 1995 (2.5 mi). That number is projected to level off in 2008 (3.3 mil). There are factors other than the number of grads, such as the percentage electing to go to college and overseas application, but overall colleges won't be able to rely upon the built-in increases in demand that the demographics have provided. While demand (applications) at the elite institutions should not be affected, the other tiers may see a slow down in applications and stop following the price increase lead of the elites.</p>
<p>You've heard correctly, Bay.</p>
<p>More & more California students from high schools I'm connected with are leaving the State for higher ed elsewhere. A trend over the last few yrs.</p>
<p>"UC has financing options available to students at all income levels. Nearly two-thirds of UC undergraduates receive some form of financial aid, and UC enrolls more lower income students that any comparable university in the nation."</p>
<p>Yup. This shows up in the Pell Grant data. Why Berkeley should have three times as many Pell Grantees as North Carolina percentagewise, or four times as many as the University of Virginia, is beyond me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
After looking at the numbers, I don't know how you can talk about these large subsidies with a straight face. I can't see you so maybe you don't have a straight face.</p>
<p>Let's see. Instruction costs 37.7 million
Academic Support 13.9 million</p>
<p>And then there are these other expenses that you count as educational
expenses
Institutional support 20.1 million
Auxiliary activities 18.8 million
Research and public service 4.7 million
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Maybe it would help to understand what's in those categories.</p>
<p>*Institutional support * is the cost of operating the campus and running the place. Finance office, the electricity bill, snow plowing, maintaining buildings, admissions office, the cost of the security department, the cost of the transportation vans for the Tri-College exchange, the IT services, the phone system. Without institutional support, you have no campus and no school and therefore no students.</p>
<p>Auxilliary Activities is primarily the cost of operating dorms, dining halls, snack bars, and the bookstore. This is a standard category in all college financial reports where room and board expenses are tallied. Remember, 95% of Swarthmore's students live in campus housing. Providing that is a real expense relative to schools where half the student body must find their own housing in apartments or frat houses. Whether you value a residential college is a personal determination. There are some small change items in this category. For example, it probably includes the cost of maintaining and paying real estate taxes on the houses the college owns and rents to professors, whatever costs are associated with renting facilities to summer sports camps, etc.</p>
<p>Research and public service is a direct cost of the undergrad educational experience. Remember, it's an undergrad-only college. All of the research and public service involves undergrad students. For example, Swarthmore students get paid for research positions and obtain summer grants for public service projects. My D has received some of those Swarthmore grant dollars. The process of writing and revising the grant proposal in conjunction with a faculty member was quite "educational". These activities are specifically intertwined with the educational philosophy of the college.</p>
<p>Mini...
Much of the answer may have to do with the high immigration levels in California. Many smart families and kids who haven't the income levels in the first generation. One would suppose that many of these kids are Asian-American. Berkeley is 41% AA undergrad.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well Mini, what has been overlooked, because for some reason Swat always comes up , is that college costs for all 4 year institutions (on average) are up 6% a year for 25 years.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm not sure that's true. Sticker prices have gone up 6% a year, but has the real price? There has been an explosion in both need-based and merit price discounting over that period of time. You would have to look at the real price (after discounts) to see the increase. </p>
<p>I could look up the increase in net pricing for Swarthmore (since I know where to look), but perhaps you can find someone willing to do the research for other schools.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It will be interesting to see what happens once the baby boomlet starts to recede.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>A lot of colleges will be going out of business. Even during the boomlet, most US colleges are struggling to fill their available seats with paying customers. It is only the colleges and universities with financial resources to subsidize education (big endowment privates and highly funded publics) that are experiencing high demand. I think most CC readers would be shocked at the number of big name schools who are concerned about their budgets being out of equilibrium and who are cutting faculty and/or trying to reduce price discounting to do something about it.</p>
<p>BTW, here's a really interesting paper by Gordon Winston of Williams College, called "Where is Aggressive Price Competition taking Higher Education?"</p>
<p>Here's a sample of his conclusions:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Let us anticipate the results with a brief summary of answers to “Where Is Price Competition Taking Us?”</p>
<p>-- “Negative tuition” will likely appear at the wealthiest colleges and universities – those that spend the most on their students’ education – as competition forces them to pay stipends to attract the best undergraduates.</p>
<p>-- The price umbrella that the wealthy and highest-cost schools now hold over the rest of higher education, over the less-wealthy schools, will collapse, exposing all schools to far more serious price competition than they’ve seen – or probably imagined – so far.</p>
<p>-- A very different price structure will emerge across higher education with higher prices charged by the poorer schools who spend less on their students and lower prices charged above. As quality goes down across schools, price will go up.</p>
<p>-- Queuing for admission at the high-expenditure schools, already high, will increase even more as they become, relatively, an even better bargain – when Stanford and Yale pay stipends to their students, virtually everyone will apply to Stanford and Yale.</p>
<p>-- Students will continue to attend lower quality, higher priced schools mainly because they can’t get into a higher quality, lower priced school.</p>
<p>-- Need-based financial aid faces an uncertain future as, more generally, does all college pricing that serves, idealistically, to redistribute income. It won’t matter at the top where student stipends are being paid all around, but it may seriously reduce low-income students’ access everywhere else.</p>
<p>-- There appears to be no obvious way to reverse the spread and energy of price competition if it gains real momentum – the genie won’t easily return to the bottle.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>BTW, I think we are seeing all of these effects start to occur.</p>
<p>"good education costs money. And the schools that have it, flaunt it.</p>
<p>(Aren't you making the case that they DO spend the funds, use them to attract and keep better faculty, provide better facilities, and pass these benefits along to their students?"</p>
<p>Well mini does that mean tat when the Acme Mouse Trap Company pays their CEO 150X what one of their shop floor workers is getting Joe consumer winds up with a better mouse trap? I don't know what the president of one of these boutique LAC's makes but I do know it is a lot and that the perks are even more staggering. If the board should decide to double or triple that paycheck and hold all their meeting in Tahiti from now one does that improve the product? You define the "cost" of that education as whatever the school decides to spend money on but somehow I just can't buy the idea that country club memberships and arboretums are really educational expenses.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You define the "cost" of that education as whatever the school decides to spend money on but somehow I just can't buy the idea that country club memberships and arboretums are really educational expenses
[/quote]
</p>
<p>We maybe arguing semantics here. I get the sense that some are using the term "education" to mean nothing beyond sitting in a classroom.</p>
<p>When I look at the my daughter's "education", I am considering the sum total of the entire residential college experience, only a small portion of which takes place sitting in a classroom.</p>
<p>BTW, on this "arboretum" thing, note that Swarthmore's "arboretum" is the entire campus. Could they still hold classes if they let the landscaping die? Sure. Would it be the same "sum total of the residential college experience" that it is today"? No.</p>
<p>"If the board should decide to double or triple that paycheck and hold all their meeting in Tahiti from now one does that improve the product? You define the "cost" of that education as whatever the school decides to spend money on but somehow I just can't buy the idea that country club memberships and arboretums are really educational expenses."</p>
<p>If the main product is "prestige", you bet it does, and in a major way.</p>
<p>(They didn't ask you do buy it, and if you don't, they don't want you anyway - they are already turning down almost 9 out of 10 applicants, and as the price rises, they even have more applicants to turn down. If you prefer, there is always the University of Phoenix, which is larger than the top 30-40 LACs combined, and maybe as large in undergraduate enrollment as the entire Ivy League.)</p>
<p>Interesteddad, I have three questions.</p>
<p>If I pay the president of a school $200,000 and then double her pay to $400,000 is a student getting a better education?</p>
<p>"You define the "cost" of that education as whatever the school decides to spend money on"</p>
<p>Interesteddad, is that true?</p>
<p>"If the board should decide to double or triple that paycheck and hold all their meeting in Tahiti from now one does that improve the product? You define the "cost" of that education as whatever the school decides to spend money on but somehow I just can't buy the idea that country club memberships and arboretums are really educational expenses."</p>
<p>"If the main product is "prestige", you bet it does, and in a major way."</p>
<p>Is prestige Swarthmore's main product?</p>
<p>interesteddad,</p>
<p>One thing not addressed in the Williams article cited in post #271, is the impact of internet learning on the whole picture. I wouldn't be surprised if internet college degrees are the wave of the future in higher education.</p>
<p>(Internet courses are already being offered in my D's public high school and our local community college)</p>
<p>I can't imagine anyone earning $60k a year would be willing to argue that a Williams education "costing" $75k is worth four University of Podunk educations. But it is not mine to judge. The prime customers - for Williams, those with incomes of $250+ are in a better position to judge one way or the other, and if they can raise envy or wi****lness in the rest of us, so much the better. </p>
<p>It's best to reject lots of "qualified" applicants. Colleges gain little prestige from whom they accept, but they get LOTS from whom they reject. The little town of Ormunk remembers for years that their val with the 2400 got rejected - they know next to nothing about the school or the value-added of the education to be offered there - but they know lots about nerdy Ned, and any college that rejects him must be very fine indeed. :eek:</p>
<p>mini,</p>
<p>So much more goes into choosing a college than a cost/benefit analysis. I believe part of the reason parents will pay those overpriced tuitions is because either they went somewhere comparable or they went somewhere less pretigious, and want something comparable or better for their own kids.</p>
<p>I believe this will correct itself, though. Using California as an example (since I know it best), many UCLA alum parents are shocked to find that their better highschool-educated offspring can't get in there anymore, and they are not ready to cede to the lower prestige CSU system, so they kill themselves to pay for a private school comparable to UCLA.</p>
<p>The CSU system is rising in prestige now, due to competition, so I would guess that soon more Californians will choose to send their kids there rather than to OOS u's or to expensive privates.</p>
<p>"So much more goes into choosing a college than a cost/benefit analysis. I believe part of the reason parents will pay those overpriced tuitions is because either they went somewhere comparable or they went somewhere less pretigious, and want something comparable or better for their own kids."</p>
<p>Yup. Good ol' Veblen again. ;) People do funny things.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If I pay the president of a school $200,000 and then double her pay to $400,000 is a student getting a better education?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That depends on the time frame over which the doubling of the salary occurred and the marketplace rate for appropriate presidents. I wish we could talk real numbers here. If anyone subsribes to the Chronical of Higher Education, they have a searchable database of presidents' salaries.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"You define the "cost" of that education as whatever the school decides to spend money on. "Interesteddad, is that true?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The cost of production is the cost of production. Decisions about whether to include leather seats or a power moonroof are product feature decisions. Some customers prefer moonroofs. Some prefer leather seats.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Is prestige Swarthmore's main product?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You are wording your questions in such a restrictive way that makes giving you a yes or no answer difficult. I would certainly say that academic prestige is a major feature of Swarthmore's product. </p>
<p>If you are defining "prestige" as name-brand recognition by Joe Public, then "no". Liberal arts colleges in general do not have the name brand recogntion of larger universities or football powerhouses.</p>