<p>I am appalled at the 20k+ price tag for an instate public U. If families cannot afford it, or do not want to pay that hefty sum, and it is a very large amount of money to ask families to pay, we will have many less educated people in our society.</p>
<p>Public universities are supported by an decreasing amount from state legislative appropriations. Many "public" universities' income is roughly 20% state money. They have to pay heating bills, salaries, maintenance, the rising cost of academic journals and books, etc. with something. If you don't want high tuition for in-state students, then be willing to have the universities financed by a broad spectrum of the state's citizens -- in other words, via tax receipts.</p>
<p>Momfromme, do you work here hwere I work? My school, New Jersey Medical School, is now being run off funds not from the state but what we faculty bring in as overhead on grants. Do you have to wonder why we can't teach as much as our title imply we should?<br>
I hate it. And it is most definitely not doing right by our students. Do the legislators care? Obviously not in NJ.</p>
<p>You're pointing to a very important dynamic -- the impact of this cost-shifting on students' education. Less certain funding leads to more classes by adjuncts, who are not there for advising, mentoring, writing letters of recommendation, and work to keep the institution going, and who don't have the time to maintain the professional work to stay current in their fields. I'm not sure the legislators even know about it and certainly the public doesn't.</p>
<p>I have lurked on CC for awhile, but this particular opinion piece is so distorted that I had to vent. A number of posts have already stated some important problems with the argument presented here, so I will repeat some of those and then add some of my own.</p>
<p>First, it is very unfair to present the residence/dining hall example at Princeton as indicative of universities in general. I teach at a public U, not a flagship, and the infrastructure here leaves much to be desired. We have added 1 new classroom building with department offices in the last decade and a half. My current building that houses my office has no windows in either the classrooms or offices. It has fake wood (vinyl) paneling and when we got new carpet about 5 years ago, it was actually used carpet from another building that just happened to be better than what we currently had. Few of the clocks work. The handle on the hallway door has been broken for over a year. The faucet in the bathroom has leaked significantly for awhile.</p>
<p>As was mentioned already, few public universities are supported by public money. I know that less than 30% of our university's budget comes from the state. And we cannot decide for ourselves to raise tuition. </p>
<p>Here is the interesting part--it costs less for a 4 year degree at my U than it does for a new mid size car. Yet the author complains that tuition has been rising too much. Just because tuition is rising does not mean that universities are becoming rich, as the author suggests. I could be that many public Us have less support from the state. It could be that in the past, tuition was too low etc. </p>
<p>What really gets me is the complaint about salaries rising for profs. to teach fewer classes. I was still earning in the mid 40s a few years ago and I was tenured, have a terminal degree and over a decade of teaching/research under my belt. My students are shocked when they discover how much I earn--most of them, especially with science degrees, will earn much more with just an undergraduate degree. Yes, my salary has risen, but I think I should be earning more than your average Costco manager.</p>
<p>It is also true that the number of administrators has increased. But because of the conservative turn in the government, and the issue of 'accountability' in higher education (the Bush people have already suggested something like a 'No Child Left Behind' for universities), we increasingly have to generate data to show that we are producing/teaching and we have to produce numbers that purport to assess what our students have learned. Someone has to administer the assessment.</p>
<p>I also agree that default rates on student loans need to be kept in check. But this is not a problem of tuition price--this is a problem of admitting underprepared students. Those students who come to U underprepared will leave after a year or two, taking out lots of loans while at the U and then not having the salary that goes with a U degree to pay back the loans. It is politically unpopular to raise standards and keep students out, although that is what we are currently doing.</p>
<p>I also find it absurd that the author criticizes universities for taking parental income into account in determining how much a family could pay. What has happened over the past 1/2 century is that a university education has no longer become an elite education--we expect that almost everyone should have the chance to get a university degree. Yet unlike K-12 education, we expect our students to pay tuition. Even in the past, universities have offered scholarships for students who could not afford to go. </p>
<p>We could end financial aid--but then a U education becomes, once again, an elite education. </p>
<p>The last claim really gets me--that standards are falling. It is interesting to read about what Harvard professors were complaining about in the 19th century--that their undergraduates could not write. We have been complaining about student performance for a long time. Here is a good example of the old nostalgia argument popular with conservative pundits.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I also agree that default rates on student loans need to be kept in check. But this is not a problem of tuition price--this is a problem of admitting underprepared students.
[/quote]
Actually, the biggest problem with loan defaults came from highly paid professionals. Lawyers topped the list. I haven't followed it lately, but because the fed govt guaranteed the loans, the banks just accepted the default & had the govt pay up. THis went on for decades, and it is not rational to think that this didn't contribute to tuition increases. The $$ continued to flow to the colleges, so they played the game. There were no penalties for the defaulters, so as that seems to have changed, you more than likely WILL see the builk of the defaulters coming from underemployed graduates or those who failed to graduate at all.</p>
<p>I think the author is focused more on the $50grand privates, including many lower tier schools with enormous COA approaching that figure.
[quote]
I think I should be earning more than your average Costco manager.
[/quote]
The age old question....why do toll collectors on the NJ Turnpike earn more than firemen? Unionized typists in a government office more than dental hygienists? I stopped trying to get my mind around salaries & what I perceived as a job's true worth a long time ago. Too many invisible hands mucking it up.</p>
<p>I don't think there is good evidence to suggest that increased government spending is helping to control higher education costs or make it more affordable. Govt grants and loans may make college more accessible, but not more affordable. There is also a hidden cost in the form of paying higher taxes whether you have kids in college or not. The charts and tables in the link below do not indicate any success in controlling college costs.</p>
<p>Tuition</a> Inflation</p>
<p>Skrlvr, you are right about underprepared students. Universities now have to add courses that are truly high school-level courses- and pay for teachers to teach, utilites to the classrooms, class room space, etc. But that's just 1 aspect of soaring costs in higher education.</p>
<p>I have a PhD in science, I make less than a lot of other people, I do not have tenure. My salary comes from the research grants I get. When Congress cuts the NIH budget, I am in trouble. Fewer grants get funded each year. None of this matters to D's college though. I think it should,</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don't think there is good evidence to suggest that increased government spending is helping to control higher education costs or make it more affordable.
[/quote]
The author is suggesting just the opposite.</p>
<p>NJ Mother, I think when NIH grants are pulled, private industry will jump in and offer the grants. I know my H uses several university programs for the research & testing he needs, as do all his colleagues at a wide variety of engineering, pharmaceutical, & teckie firms. If the research is valuable, the grants will come. As it now stands, one could argue that NIH grants are a form of corporate welfare.</p>
<p>you aren't worried about biased research?
We have a problem with it as it is</p>
<p>quote: As it now stands, one could argue that NIH grants are a form of corporate welfare.</p>
<p>Hardly. Pharmaceutical companies rely on discoveries underwritten by NIH grants to create the drugs people purchase. And my university has tried to persuade private investment in my research, which is for a novel treatment for prostate cancer, to no avail. However both the NIH and the Veterans' Administration are currently funding it.</p>
<p>EK4, I worry about biased research all the time. I know people with private funding who've been pressured to "misnterpret' results to favor the company sponsoring the results, and worse than that.</p>
<p>What a dumb article. Yeah, Princeton is rich. What's the guy's point? Princeton is not in any way representative of 99% of colleges in the US. Every op-ed writer with an ax to grind loves to quote Whitman's description in order to demonstrate some kind of supposed excess that plagues higher education as a whole, while totally ignoring the actual facts of the issue - that most universities struggle, and that colleges as rich as those they refer to almost exclusively in their articles are rare indeed.</p>
<p>The point about price discrimination is also dumb. Yes, it's price discrimination. So? If people don't like differential prices based on income, they're welcome to pay full freight (worth noting that it's not even full freight, since tuition costs at Princeton et al. are only a fraction of the actual cost of the education).</p>
<p>I have to disagree with you SS about the focus of the article. It is an attack on higher education in general, not just the 50K privates. I don't think that the article is trying to claim that it is tuition at these schools that account for the increase in higher education tuition overall. I am curious, too, to see who benefits most from the governmental programs attacked in the article--students at these 50grand privates or students at state schools in general. </p>
<p>I bet that those who benefit most from the govermental programs that the article attacks are those who are going to state schools or schools with more modest tuition. And it is probably those students who have the most to lose. </p>
<p>I disagree with the idea that all we need to do is let the market do its thing and everything will work out--tuition will come down, more will go to school without loans etc because tuition is less. The idea here is that the current tuition meets the needs of the basics and then some (like leaded windows). </p>
<p>Here's one reason why I disagree. Already market forces are at work at my U. Instructors are expected to generate a large number of credit hours--in other words, bigger classes are better. More students per teacher means more tuition dollars etc. per salary expenditure. So if we let market forces work, you would want universities will large lectures--that way you keep costs low and 'paying customers' (students) high.</p>
<p>But you can't have an instructor teach a writing class with very many students--it just doesn't work. So writing classes tend to be small. Who pays for that? And even for core classes such as history that should involve some writing do not, because of class size---it is better to have a large lecture class of over 100 students. So the product (education) you get is not as good.</p>
<p>I do know that there are studies which show that a significant impact on quality of education has to do with class size--the smaller the better. Also, first year students in smaller classes tend to make more connections with their U, have more an investment in their education, make higher GPAs and are less likely to drop out.</p>
<p>But small class size costs more. Yet few public Us want to invest the kind of money necessary to increase full time faculty to make this happen because it really is so costly.</p>
<p>About a decade ago, our U experienced a budget crisis because education here is supported by sales tax revenue. With a recession, there is less money. Our particular school in the U ended up losing faculty--not because the school had huge fancy buildings to support etc. but simply because over 96% of the school's budget is in salaries. Our dean said that we could keep the faculty but then simply lose the entire phone service for the school.</p>
<p>The argument used in the opinion piece seems strikingly similar to other arguments against 'government handouts'-- that the handout is being abused by immoral (note the 'falling standards' claim), lazy (teaching less) people who are using the money not for what it is intended for (education) but some luxury item (such as leaded glass windows). Didn't we see the same attack on welfare moms?</p>