Accounting differences indeed differ, but the two cleanest of the 7 categories or bins for expenses tend to be
(a) Instructional expenses; and (b) academic support. And these are the things that Tuition and Fees support. If you break down the numbers at any given university, the instructional category will be dominated by faculty salary, and then TA and PTI (part-time instruction) lines.There is a separate category for Research, but this is where external grants support is expended. This Research category will include some/considerable faculty salary when a grant “buys out” faculty time to work on research. This faculty time in Instructional then goes to TAs and PTI etc. The “department research” is the portion of faculty time devoted to research that has no external grant support .
There is much to be learned in comparing 100s of universities and colleges in terms of A and B. Institutions that rely on economies of scale (large class sizes), technology (lots of online courses) and part time labor in teaching will have
instructional expenditures that tend to fall into about the 6K-10K range per student annually.
People are absolutely right to say there a variations in the accounting, and could further talk about efficient different institutions are in delivering particular outcomes. But, it is still remains a good comparison to look at:
What is my family’s net price for tuition and fees versus what is being spent on Instructional and academic support?
And then what is the comparison of School 1 versus School 2. If for example, you are paying less in tuition and fees for your student than what a school is spending on, say, just Instructional expenses per student. Then, you probably have a good deal
I go into all this because it is helpful to think not just in terms of what you are having to pay in school comparisons, but what is likely to be actually spent by the institution per student.
To me the most interesting piece of data would be a comparison of the instructional costs vs the administrative costs and a chart of their comparative growth over the last decade or two at each college or university. Across the country, administrative positions have been multiplying while faculty positions have been shrinking (in the sense that more expensive tenure track positions are being replaced by much cheaper adjunct instructors, part and full-time lecturers on year to year contracts, etc.). This trend is, IMO, a sign of decreased value placed on undergraduate education, and I would prefer to send my child to an institution that is keeping administrative costs down and putting a higher proportion of funding into instruction and academic support.
@Economo@tk21769 Thank you for the details. Coaches are the highest paid “instructors” at many big campuses- wonder if they are factored into the costs.
I would not be surprised if accounting differences sucked in costs related to medical and other professional schools into the cost numbers of some schools more than others, perhaps making the comparisons less reliable.
If so, that would mean that schools that are mostly or all undergraduate (e.g. LACs and probably some other schools like CSUs) would be subject to less accounting variation due to this effect and therefore be more reliable to compare.
I agree that we probably are seeing the effects of significant accounting differences.
The “top” LACs seem to be spending about $20K-$40K/year on instruction per student.
Large student bodies (and big classes) create economies of scale that tend to reduce the cost per student.
Graduate and professional programs tend to increase it.
Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, and Wesleyan all show instructional costs per FTE student in the $25K-$30K/year range (according to IPEDS data)…
Vassar is slightly higher ($31K); Pomona and Williams are higher still ($36K and $40K respectively).
Davidson and Reed are lower ($21K and $23K respectively).
However, research universities are all over the map (Texas at $16K, Yale at $125K/year).
I don’t understand why a private university like Yale would be spending so much more per student on “instruction” than a top public university like Texas. More, yes … but not nearly 8X more.
The average full professor’s 9-month salary at Yale is about $193K.
At UT-Austin, it’s about $138K.
At Carleton College, it’s about $121K.
(http://faculty-salaries.startclass.com/)
However, even within the range of small LACs (where economies of scale are less available than at bigger schools), there are large variations. For just instructional costs, University of Minnesota - Morris spends only $6,814, much less than the LACs named above. Juniata College is listed at $8,820, Clark University is listed at $11,577, and Knox College is listed at $11,484.
I’m surprised the cost spread is that great among LACs.
A full professor at Carleton makes about 50% more than a full professor at U of M - Morris (not 4x more).
Average class sizes at Carleton and U of M - Morris don’t seem to be all that different.
The difference isn’t all that great in the percentage of instructors who are full-time with PhDs (85% at Morris v. 97% at Carleton.)
One has to look at student/faculty ratio, not just class size. The overall size of the faculty at Carleton looks to be around 221 vs. around 127 at Morris – for very similar sized student bodies. If the class sizes are similar, that suggests that faculty at Carleton have a lighter teaching load than the faculty at Morris. That means that the faculty at Carleton have more time to devote to each of their classes (and the students in those classes), and to furthering their scholarship as well.
I agree with @menloparkmom , there’s something wrong with these numbers. I also wonder if Georgia’s numbers are affected by the HOPE scholarship system in our state, skewing the numbers lower than they would be otherwise.
“The average full professor’s 9-month salary at Yale is about $193K.
At UT-Austin, it’s about $138K.
At Carleton College, it’s about $121K.
(http://faculty-salaries.startclass.com/)”
@Economo, averages aren’t all that great as a tool to use in decision-making, though. For instance, engineering and science students tend to have access to equipment and faculty that cost a lot more that what humanities students use (which is why in many countries, there is a large tuition differential between those 2 types of majors).
Furthermore, in some of the less popular majors, a student at a big public with low average expenditures may be able to get as much individualized attention as one at a private with much higher average expenditures.
This would be true with Classics at UIUC, for instance. Yet is being a Classics major at UIUC better than being a CS major at UIUC (with their huge oversubscribed classes)?