I’m wondering if spending per student could be a way for us to help us decide on a school for S19. We are still waiting on decisions but he’s applied to many LACs and a couple of national universities. I’ve found a little bit of information on expenditure per student. Sometimes it’s broken out between instructional spending and “student related” spending. I found one article that gave a top ten list of LACs for this category. We will be full pay so, in addition to other ways to determine best fit like the social scene, career placement, and academic offerings, I’d like to know if this spending per student number can really be felt on campuses. Some of his schools rank pretty high in this category and others not so much. Part of the problem is that, when I can even find info on this, schools include different factors and it’s hard to compare apples to apples. Thoughts?
Also, I’ve been looking at alumni giving and the percent of alums who give each year. Anyone think that’s an important factor? Seems to me like it would be. And it seems to correlate to the percent of kids returning for sophomore year.
It’s so hard to determine what we think will be worth close to $300k when our S19 is pretty undecided on major (but now leaning towards math or maybe physics but he’s really undecided). What exactly are we paying for? Where is our money going? It seems impossible to find out. This all started because I read an article from Kenyon and it actually stated that 24% of tuition dollars go towards financial aid. Which means 24% of our $55 tuition payment would be going directly to paying for other kids’ tuition. Other schools seem (yet I can’t figure it out for sure) that they use alumni donations or even interest from their endowment to fund financial aid.
So, anyway, expenditure per student? Alumni giving? Are these good ways to judge a school?
I don’t think there’s any single factor or ranking system to go with. I can tell you personally some of the things used in USNWR are downright stupid. However, what works best for us is looking at schools of interest under multiple ranking systems (higher ed-WSJ, Forbes, USNWR, washington monthly, niche etc…) ; seeing how those schools move up or down with what we value based on schools we’ve attended or know a lot about in the same ranking system. Also, fully understanding publics will always rank lower than what I’d call near equivalent privates. Also, the non-quantitative factors also weigh in (geography, weather , school size, etc…)
does expenditure per student include gold plated bathrooms in dorms? if so isn’t that less important than the state of the labs, gyms etc.
I personally like Forbes since it is one of the few that mixes in LACs . But I think they are a bit harsh on publics; also schools with separate colleges or unique well known majors e.g. engineering need to be examined very carefully in these ranking systems. there is no 1 goto IMHO https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/#53abfcbe1987
@homerdog you should listen to the Malcolm Gladwell podcast that talks about Vassar vs Bowdoin. Vassar is like you describe, using lots of money to help more poor kids go compared to Bowdoin that has a 4 star chef!
Thanks@anon145. I’d really like to dive into the numbers on expenditure per student though. Where does the money go? Again, since we are full pay, I’d like to see how the schools spend their tuition money.
But, I will be candid. I would like our tuition money to be spent on things that benefit our son. Now, I believe that diversity will benefit him for sure so financial aid to low income families makes sense to me. I’d like to know where the rest of the tuition money is going. Or even if the school is actually using tuition money for financial aid for students. In a new story from Kenyon, they flat out said that 24% of tuition money goes towards financial aid and this is a school that’s not highly diverse. They go on to say that they have to stay need-aware because they need the tuition money to help pay for financial aid for other students. That doesn’t sit as well with me.
% of alums giving can correlate to the strength of the alumni network, which can relate to career opportunities.
The 24% of tuition spent on financial aid at Kenyon is probably reflective of their smaller endowment relative to other schools. Schools may also do that calculation differently - some using endowed finds for FA, while others using tuition. I do think a large endowment and/or high donations to a school can result in a lots of student enhancements.
^ Just a student, but that’s doesn’t make sense. If they said that most of the $ you pay goes towards financial aid for others, why are they need aware (if supposedly most of people’s COA goes towards funding for other students… shouldn’t they be able to be need blind, then?) Sorry it I don’t 100% understand.
One of the criteria that we used for my son’s college choice was the “Endowment per Student” ranking. Most folks only look at the COA figure while how much the college is spending per student is completely ignored. It’s good that you’re looking into this.
At my son’s college, students are enjoying all expenses paid experiences, such as actual class taking place onsite locations around the globe (e.g., archaeology course in Greece, a course on Japanese culture in Japan, etc.), the Bridge (Gap) Year abroad for incoming freshmen, university orchestra’s biennial tour of Europe (my son’s touring Spain with the group at end of this month), etc. I’ve even heard of a student whose request for gold nuggets for his Senior Thesis research was granted by the university. You come up with a research idea, and the university is going to support it financially. My son also told me during his winter break that he’s convinced that the university wants to make sure you graduate fat based on how much free (outside of paid residential dining) food they throw at you at all hours throughout the school year. During the “Dean’s Date,” the university handed out a free beanie with the university logo (looks to be about $30 value) to all students until they ran out. To my son’s surprise, his residential college handed out a free rain jacket (about $60-70 value) so that the freshmen can participate in the outdoor marching ceremony (raining that day) marking the arrival of the freshmen class. Attending a university home sporting event? A free shirt or scarf and such is awaiting for each student. Oh, for a music major with pre-med track son, his weekly violin lessons are free. It just goes on and on. How much the college is spending per student can be huge with significant impact on the student’s experiences – academic and extracurricular – while on campus for four years.
It’s probably because of all these that my son’s university is ranked #1 in alumni giving year in and year out.
The extra ROI between a pricey and a modestly priced school in roughly the same academic tier comes down to the student. Alumni giving speaks to loyalty to the school, which is a generically good thing- but says nothing about why they are loyal (cf, UKy).
Spending per student is an average and says nothing about the relevance to your student (cf, any college sports stadiums/facilities). IF a school invests a lot in a specific thing that is of interest to your student, that can be relevant.
Otherwise, expensive schools tend to get you a few specifics, (typically including: smaller classes, more direct prof:student (v TA) engagement, a student body that is more homogenous - along many metrics, including academic motivation) and then a bunch of ‘experiential’ aspects- which are the ones that relate to how your student flourishes.
As a reference point, one of my collegekids went to a wildly expensive LAC. By current standards, you don’t see the $$: the food was ok, but nothing more. Ditto the dorms. Very little in the way of climbing walls and other fancy stuff. But my introverted collegekid found her people and came into her own, She had mostly superb, invested teachers, good gender balance in her STEM classes, good labs to work in, a strong paid summer research program, etc. The LAC offered no merit aid and met full need, and she noted that many of the people she liked and admired as outstanding students would not be at the school otherwise. Imo, those students added materially to her college experience- does that count in figuring out an RoI?
The key to figuring out the RoI of something is to identify what “return” you are looking for. The old saw that ‘you get what you measure’ has validity: the key is to know what, exactly, you are trying to measure.
However, the actual expense per student at Kenyon is greater than its tuition and fees. Even full pay families, then, are currently being subsidized by donations from Kenyon’s graduates, of whom many would have received financial assistance as students.
So…I’m starting to realize that the schools that have the best spending per student are also the ones that are very difficult to get into. Shouldn’t be a surprise. Fingers crossed then for the biggest reaches on S19’s list.
I think it really depends on what the school is spending their money on. One of the schools on my dd’s list is in the top 10 for their endowment $ and we were very underwhelmed with their academic facilities, condition of their buildings on a whole, dining, etc… I’m not sure where there $ was going but it wasn’t into anything that would have been meaningful for my DD.
I think it’s a much tougher decision choosing a school without a clear cut major.
ROI is probably going to be based more on major and career goal (altho not perfectly)
Yikes. If true, and if other schools are doing this too, you’re going to see a lot of complaints. Too many are borrowing to cover such huge tuition bills, and if they’re borrowing $40k overall for OTHER students’ costs, that’s just not ethical if not fully disclosed.
My husband is an interesting one in that he’d much rather pay for smaller classes and other academic opportunities than fancy dorms or landscaping. In fact, he liked the crab grass at Bowdoin more than the flowers at Davidson. He’s not into paying for the country club life for our kids. Lol. We had crudddy dorms at Northwestern but got awesome educations.