The top 10, excluding LSU Health Sciences Shreveport ($86,436):
School Cost per student Tuition
Yale 157659 45800
Caltech 120792 45390
WUStL 119969 48093
Johns Hopkins 115179 48710
Columbia (NY) 96118 53000
Stanford 95430 45729
Chicago 92382 50193
US Naval Academy 90237 0
Harvard 84218 47074
Vanderbilt 81629 43260
The top 10 public, excluding LSU Health Sciences Shreveport ($86,436):
School Cost per student Tuition / OOS
US Naval Academy 90237 0
US Coast Guard Academy 71567 0
US Military Academy 66775 0
US Air Force Academy 66599 0
UCLA 51004 12816 39498
US Merchant Marine Acad 49403 1107
Penn State 38739 17514 31345
Washington 35060 11839 34143
California Maritime 34174 5472 16632
North Carolina 33862 8591 33673
The top 10 state flagships:
School Cost per student Tuition / OOS
Penn State 38739 17514 31345
Washington 35060 11839 34143
North Carolina 33862 8591 33673
Michigan 31219 13528 43148 (LD LS&A)
18780 48746 (UD CoE)
Connecticut 30931 10524 32066
UC Berkeley 27427 13518 40200
Virginia 24478 14468 43082
Ohio State 24090 10037 27365
Alaska - Fairbanks 23849 6814 21353
Minnesota 23743 13790 22210
Notes:
Some of the state flagships (Penn State, Washington, North Carolina, Alaska, Minnesota) appear to subsidize non-resident list-price students, rather than making a profit on them. The amount of apparent subsidy to students paying list price is far greater at the highest spending private schools, though. The US government spends a lot educating future military officers at the academies; ROTC scholarships look like a bargain in comparison.
LSU Health Sciences Shreveport is mostly a medical campus with a few undergraduate programs, which is presumably why it has such high costs. UCLA may be accounting its medical school costs in a way that makes its costs appear much higher than those of other UCs. It is possible that some of the high cost privates’ costs are inflated similarly.
From IPEDS data, I’m finding that the top LACs (e.g. Williams, Pomona) spend about $30K-$40K per full time equivalent (FTE) student per year on instruction. The top private research universities (like Stanford) may spend over $80K per student per year on instruction. Princeton, which has relatively limited graduate/professional school programs (and no med school) spends ~$53K per student per year on instruction. The number for top state universities can be as high as $41K (UCLA), but the more typical numbers seem to be lower (Texas ~$16K, Berkeley $20K, Michigan $24K.)
For comparison with the above, here are some LACs’ cost per student, including instruction, student services, academic support, operations and maintenance, and institutional support (instruction is generally the biggest category by far).
School Cost per student Tuition / OOS
Williams 68546 49110
Pomona 63156 45832
Amherst 60559 49730
Swarthmore 58902 47442
Haverford 54076 47214
Smith 50146 46010
Harvey Mudd 49948 48594
Bryn Mawr 47874 46030
Carleton 47285 48987
Reed 46138 47760
Mount Holyoke 40701 43886
Sweet Briar 37265 34935
Spelman 29369 25496
New College of Florida 29327 6916 14945
St. Olaf 27979 41700
Morehouse 23603 23966
Mount St Mary's (MD) 22401 37700
Minnesota - Morris 15557 11896 11896
SUNY at Geneseo 14221 6470 16320
Truman State 11833 7430 13654
Note: New College of Florida lists $29,945 as the non-resident tuition, but all domestic non-resident students receive an automatic $15,000 scholarship.
Thank you @ucbalumnus. I’ve been tempted many times to try to explain this point to the full pay or substantial EFC parents who seem to think that they are subsidizing the tuition of students receiving need-based aid or otherwise “unfairly” having to pay for things they “shouldn’t have to pay for,” – but I’ve never had the hard data to back it up. Most endowment money (and the proceeds from investing it) is restricted. Our development folks do targeted fundraising for new buildings and our full-needs-met financial aid (we’ve also had to explain to some of our faculty that we’re not stealing their potential research money to pay tuition for kids who can’t afford it).
I’m not going to be thrilled about being full pay for S17 (to be clear – that will be due to assets from my late husband’s life insurance, not an enormous salary – just to head off the bloated administration myth that also gets raised), but I also know that I’m not being ripped off,
Well, you wouldn’t be “ripped off” at Williams in terms of getting $68,546 spent on the student for a tuition of $49,110, even if you get no financial aid. However, one could still question whether the $68,546 spent on the student at Williams is really $56,713 more value added than the $11,833 spent on the student at Truman State.
It is possible that accounting differences at colleges with medical schools may cause big differences due to medical school costs somehow being pulled in at some but not others (e.g. Yale versus Harvard, or UCLA versus UCR).
On the other hand, LACs and other schools without significant professional and graduate programs would not have this type of perturbation in their spending per student.
@ucbalumnus, these costs per student include administrative costs? Fixed costs? The cost of maintaining football stadiums? If professors are paid more, the costs per student are higher, correct?
The original post needs to be added to the thread about UC’s. I used to think residents were subsidizing the cost of educating OOS students or otherwise “giving away” an asset that belongs to taxpayers, but the data show the opposite happening. In reality, OOS students are subsidizing the education of taxpayers, and the asset becomes more valuable for taxpayers (by creating revenue stream and also by reinforcing the university’s reputation as a national and international draw).
They include “instruction, student services, academic support, operations and maintenance, and institutional support”, however those are defined (going to individual school entries typically shows that “instruction” is by far the largest of these).
I can believe that instruction typically comprises the largest share of costs per student.
One would hope that is the case, right?
Nevertheless, there does seem to be significant variation in the ratio of instructional costs to total costs per student. By my reckoning (using IPEDS data for instruction and the numbers cited above for total costs), instruction at Reed, Pomona, and Williams comprises 50%-59% of total costs.
Instruction at UChicago and Stanford comprises 91% and 93% of total costs, respectively.
Total spending minus instructional spending is ~$28K - $35K per student at Pomona, Williams, Yale, and Harvard. Total spending minus instructional spending is approximately $7K-$8K at Berkeley and UChicago.
Also,I would take this one step further and move away from posted prices (about tuition) and look at your net prices (for each individual family or on average at the institution).
I have often thought that this calculation - the ratio of the average expenditures per student by a college or university divided by actual net price a family pays - is not well understood by many people, and should be what a key variable that is focused on.
To do that, I would argue that first a family should look at all the accepts or options for their DC, and then ask what is the feasible set that we can actually afford on our budget once we know our “net price” at each. And THEN you have to ask what expenditures per student you can expect to get relative to what you are paying. You are hoping these are positive - and you’ll be surprised how this can vary. So, what you then want to do is split out and focus on the TUITION & FEES part of your net price, and compare this to what the school spends per student on (a) instructional; (b) academic support.
Yes, at some schools you may have a net price on TUITION & FEES that ranges from $6K to $45K across schools, but what are you getting for this in terms of (a) instructional expenditures per capita; (b) academic support per capita.
Yes, there are complications, but less so if done this way. And again, fairly straightforward to look this up in IPEDS.
Do “instructional” costs include faculty salaries, or only direct instructional costs such as the salaries of TAs who do the bulk of the teaching? UC campuses are moving toward online instruction to accommodate growing student population and deal with the shortage of space in classrooms. So students will be spending even more time staring at a screen while the faculty continue to collect their salaries. I wonder if the amount spent on instructional and academic support is really the best measure of quality.
A portion of the FSA costs are the procuring, maintenance, and costs of instruction at longer intervals on campus*.
There’s also the factor of maintaining sufficient engineering labs/facilities for all cadets to fulfill their core engineering requirements regardless of major. A friend at an FSA recalled all cadets had to take a minimum of 5 engineering courses to fulfill that requirement when he was there…even if one was a humanities/social science major.
There’s also the factor that FSA cadets spend most of their summers on military training tours/cruises…including costs of travel to/from those bases/ships.
ROTC programs do have their own costs…but they’re not likely to be anywhere near as extensive as those for the FSAs.
I.e. Ships for instructing Annapolis/Coast Guard/USMMA midshipmen, aircraft for USAFA students looking to pick up their first pilot license, military assault/training grounds for cadets and instructors, weapon ranges/weapons/instructors, etc.
Here is a description of the “Instruction-Total Amount” variable on the IPEDS site:
Although IPEDS has separate expense categories for “Research”, it’s not clear to me how these are distinguished from the “departmental research” expenses mentioned above. I would expect “Instruction” expenses to include the salaries of all faculty who teach classes, even if those salaries also cover research activities. The salaries of medical and law school professors must drive up the Instruction expenses much more than the salaries of college instructors.
Stanford’s “Instruction - Total Amount” is ~$1.4B, or about $89K per FTE student;
Pomona’s is $0.06B, or about $36K per FTE student;
Berkeley’s is $0.73B, or about $20K per FTE student;
Truman State’s is $0.5B, or about $9K per FTE student…
According to College Scorecard, for family income of $48,001-$75,000,
the average net cost to attend Stanford University is $6,240;
the average net cost to attend Pomona College $6,964;
the average net cost to attend Truman State is $12,929;
the average net cost to attend UC Berkeley is $13,944;
However, the College Scorecard numbers don’t differentiate in-state v. OOS students.
According to IPEDS data for 2013-14, for family income of $48,001-$75,000,
the average net cost for an in-state Title IV federal FA recipient to attend Truman State was $11,829;
the average net cost for an in-state Title IV federal FA recipient to attend UC Berkeley was $13,192.
However, even though IPEDS has a standard definition/formula for each category, if you dig deaper you descover that each university has it’s own accounting scheme. What’s being counted as “instruction” at one university, may be in “administration” at another. Employee healthcare and retirement benefits may be paid at the state level and not even be part of the Universities budget. Some cost may be held at the “System” level and not at each campus level…
So don’t take the numbers as a clear cut comparison.
It still vexes me that UCLA $ are so much higher than the other UCs…something funky going on in the accounting…
