Income Levels at Top Colleges (Mini, have you seen this?)

<p>Be gentle Xiggi.</p>

<p>xiggi:</p>

<p>your Russian needs a little work.</p>

<p>BB, I think Xiggi is transliterating with a Texan accent.</p>

<p>Xiggi, mweh vazh po khoronet tweh.</p>

<p>Oh well, the cyrillic characters did not post, so I used the phonetic version that was posted on the site. It must have been the Houston's NASA version they used to listen to the cosmonauts. :)</p>

<p>So, here's an emeritus professor's analysis of the undergraduate cost of education. His numbers suggest that "undergraduate students at UC are now paying for 95% of the actual cost" of the education. If you would like to point out some flaws in his accounting, feel free Xiggi.</p>

<p><a href="http://socrates.berkeley.edu/%7Eschwrtz/Part_7.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz/Part_7.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also, 1997 figures (harder to get juicy details from privates) for Stanford University provide that 40% of the operation budget comes from the federal government. </p>

<p>My God, is Stanford University a public school? Or maybe, just maybe, it's primarily a research institution like Berk that gets lots of federal money...<em>not for undergraduate education</em>!</p>

<p>I'd sooner trust an accounting professor than a physics professor to tell me how to allocate costs and income streams to different activities of a complicated organization like a research university.</p>

<p>Yes clearly a physics PhD does not have the required math skills to understand these things. Did you actually read the link, token? A university's budget isn't <em>that</em> complex, most of the complications aren't because he can't "allocate costs and income streams" but because there's gray area between undergrad and grad/research.</p>

<p>Cool, here are a few sources:</p>

<ol>
<li>"With 60% of the University of California, Berkeley budget coming from state and federal funds, Cal Advocates positively impact the financial resources we receive to ensure the success of the greatest public university in the United States." By Robert J. Birgeneau, Chancellor</li>
</ol>

<p><a href="http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/cal/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=2942849%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/cal/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=2942849&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<ol>
<li>"Although many people think UC gets most of its funding from the State, state support only provides roughly 24% of the University's operating budget." </li>
</ol>

<p><a href="http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/ucfriends/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=3247868%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/ucfriends/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=3247868&lt;/a> </p>

<ol>
<li>"Historically, the State has heavily subsidized the cost of education, but
in recent years, the State share has declined while the share paid by
students has increased significantly. While in 1985-86
students contributed 11% toward their educations, they currently pay 30%
of the cost of their educations."</li>
</ol>

<p>Undergraduate Student Aid
The percentage of undergraduate students receiving some type of financial
aid in 2002-03 was 61%. Half (50%) of all undergraduates received gift aid
(scholarships, fellowships, and grants) averaging approximately $6,300 per
recipient. Gift aid represented 53% of all undergraduate aid, with self-help
aid (loans and work-study) comprising the remainder. About 71% of all
undergraduate aid was awarded on the basis of financial need in 2002-03,
reflecting the principle that undergraduate financial support is primarily
intended to provide access to a University education for those students who
otherwise would be unable to afford to attend. Non-need-based support
comprised the remaining 29% of aid to undergraduates. The majority (72%)
of non-need-based support is awarded in the form of loans, with scholarships
comprising the remainder. </p>

<p>For the budget of UC, there is a VERY large pdf file, which is available at
<a href="http://budget.ucop.edu/rbudget/200506/2005-06budgetforcurrentoperations.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://budget.ucop.edu/rbudget/200506/2005-06budgetforcurrentoperations.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The information about student fees and financial aid starts at the 200+ page. It is not possible to reproduce the graphs.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=31221%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=31221&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"The UC Office of the President questions the validity of Schwartz's data, though. "(Schwartz) has come up with another calculation that's based on a lot of assumptions," said Ravi Poorsina, a spokeswoman for UCOP. Poorsina said UC officials use a cost-per-student calculation that includes undergraduate and graduate students, and added that it is "not completely possible" to determine the cost of attendance for a single undergraduate student. UCOP, which "probably" has more access to hard data than Schwartz does, "can't even come up with a number," she said. "He assumes a lot of data because he doesn't have access to a lot of it."</p>

<p>Math skills are only a subset of the skills necessary to do accounting well, as any math-able person who has taken even the most elementary course in accounting is well aware. As Xiggi's posts mention, allocating money flows in a large organization to one activity or another is based on ASSUMPTIONS, and it takes deep learning in accounting to make reasonable assumptions about those issues.</p>

<p>TD;</p>

<p>while I have many friends in Tx, I don't remember a Russian translation for y'all, y'all. LOL</p>

<p>Xiggi, 1. + 2. you're just repeating things you said earlier and 3. = too vague, that stat of financial aid includeds non-government financial aid. Frankly I'm disappointed you didn't find anything better than the UC budget, I already had that much. Perhaps you took zagat's advice too seriously and went easy on me?</p>

<p>Anyway, from the bruin paper you quote next:
"Ravi Poorsina, a spokeswoman for UCOP. Poorsina said UC officials use a cost-per-student calculation that includes undergraduate and graduate students, and added that it is "not completely possible" to determine the cost of attendance for a single undergraduate student."</p>

<p>Do you really think lumping undergrad and grad students together like this brings accurate results for undergrad cost per student?</p>

<p>That being said, I'm done arguing with you about the details. As I've stated many times by now, private (research) universities get mucho government money just as public ones do. But the 40% of Stanford's operating budget from the government isn't there to subsidize undergraduate education, just like most of Berkeley's government money isn't there to subsidize undergraduate education.</p>

<p>BigBrother, I am also done discussing this subject with you. </p>

<p>FWIW, I repeated what I had posted BUT added the sources. It is not what I said, but what other people said that matters. </p>

<p>As far as the UC budget, mentioning your disappointment in its vagueness only illustrates that you don't know much about it, nor had seen before. It is obvious that anyone remotely aware of the content of the report would not have made the erroneous comments you made in this thread. </p>

<p>I won't continue to spoon-feed you the knowledge to debate this issue. There are plenty of additional sources for additional details, in case you want to better understand the issue. To start, one does not need to go further that the links provided at the websites I mentioned earlier.</p>

<p>Just a last comment regarding the research by the famous professor. You might try to ascertain which of the undergraduate or graduate school would be capable of operating in the black? Another question you may ask yourself if Berkeley could REALLY provide an undergraduate education to its students for about $15,000 when a school such as Williams advances that the true cost is anywhere between $60,000 and $90,000. Could the answer be that Williams does not have access to the same horn of abundance?</p>

<p>Xiggi:</p>

<p>thanks much for posting the sites. Do you know of any similar sites for private schools? It would be interesting to see how the budgets of such schools like Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst, Stanford, Pomona, and the like report.</p>

<p>While I do not think that all schools presents their budgets in the same manner as the UC, some information is usually available.</p>

<p>For instance, I remember seeing a pretty detailed analysis of the budget at Mt Holyoke. It was on their website. Just using google, I found this report on Dartmouth: <a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Enews/features/budget/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/features/budget/&lt;/a> or <a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Evox/0405/1108/budget.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~vox/0405/1108/budget.html&lt;/a> .</p>

<p>In general terms, the Office of the Provost is responsible for issuing the budget reports.</p>

<p>Cal has an undergraduate enrollment of ~24,000 and (relatively) large undergraduate class sizes. Williams has an undergraduate enrollment of ~2,000 and very small undergraduate class sizes. Large schools can spread the costs and thus costs them less per student. It doesn't take a genius to understand why a liberal arts college has to spend more per student than a very large public school.</p>

<p>Now that I'm done playing cowboys and communists with everyone's favorite pseudo-intellectual, if anyone actually wants to attack/defend economic affirmative action, I'm still up for that discussion. But I'm guessing this pointless bickering has probably thrown this thread too far out of orbit...</p>