This discussion was created from comments split from: Elite Endowments for 2017.
Dartmouth’s Alumni publication did an article a few years back on spending per student at Dartmouth compared to some other top schools mentioned in this threat. https://dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/articles/why-dartmouth-so-expensive
You can all judge for yourselves to what extent the have a larger endowment/student allows greater spending/student is supported by the data (copied from the article):
Spending per Student (fy 2013)
Yale $177,314
Princeton $87,518
Dartmouth $82,101
Harvard $74,360
Williams $61,881
Amherst $53,975
Brown $48,849
Tufts $44,916
^I wonder what drives that crazy Yale number.
Yale, with the second highest endowment per student and the highest spending per student could not afford to hire additional computer science faculty for an entire decade while the field was undergoing explosive growth (and other schools with less than a tenth the endowment were able to grow their faculty)…
It kind of makes one wonder where all the money goes, as well as raises questions about the correlation between endowment/spending per student and quality of undergraduate education…
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/10/21/cs-department-struggles-for-faculty/
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/383286-net-university-spending-per-student-p1.html
IPEDS tracks instructional spending per student (among other data).
Below are the 2015 numbers I get for the USNWR top 30 national universities.
For comparison, I’ve also included numbers for 8 schools ranked near the bottom (tied for #223).
ISPS … University
$111,600 … Yale University
$109,265 … Washington University in St Louis
$101,724 … Stanford University
$95,021 … California Institute of Technology
$85,372 … University of Chicago
$80,096 … Vanderbilt University
$78,823 … Johns Hopkins University
$77,711 … Columbia University in the City of New York
$67,679 … Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$64,822 … Duke University
$49,804 … University of Pennsylvania
$49,654 … Princeton University
$47,901 … Harvard University
$45,209 … University of Southern California
$43,996 … University of California-Los Angeles
$42,978 … Emory University
$39,808 … Northwestern University
$39,446 … Rice University
$32,871 … Brown University
$32,159 … Carnegie Mellon University
$30,448 … Georgetown University
$30,327 … New York University
$27,310 … University of Notre Dame
$27,205 … Wake Forest University
$26,718 … University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
$26,574 … Dartmouth College
$24,604 … Cornell University
$23,234 … University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
$21,938 … Tufts University
$21,934 … University of California-Berkeley
$18,233 … University of Virginia-Main Campus
$13,463 … Wayne State University
$9,852 … Shenandoah University
$9,287 … University of South Dakota
$7,646 … Georgia State University
$6,994 … Gardner-Webb University
$6,721 … California State University-Fresno
$6,599 … Ashland University
$6,338 … Benedictine University
Source: IPEDS (data for FY2015 )
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/Home/UseTheData
@tk21769, are LAC’s included as it would be interesting to see spending patters there as well?
Here are some SLACs.
ISPS … College
$41,938 … Williams College
$38,982 … Wellesley College
$37,531 … Pomona College
$32,697 … Washington and Lee University
$32,385 … Hamilton College
$32,257 … Harvey Mudd College
$32,209 … Swarthmore College
$29,685 … Vassar College
$29,572 … Scripps College
$28,867 … Oberlin College
$28,607 … Haverford College
$27,406 … Carleton College
$27,277 … Bryn Mawr College
$27,189 … Claremont McKenna College
$26,858 … Amherst College
$25,388 … Colgate University
$25,142 … Middlebury College
$24,969 … Grinnell College
$23,312 … Reed College
$21,910 … Kenyon College
$21,818 … Barnard College
$21,346 … Colby College
$20,398 … Davidson College
$20,370 … Macalester College
Thx. Interesting that expenditures are similar to all but the top handful of universities.
and very heartening to see that many elite LAC’s are able to spend as much or more than some Ivies and top research universities:
$32,871 … Brown University
$32,159 … Carnegie Mellon University
spending is equal to;
$32,697 … Washington and Lee University
$32,385 … Hamilton College
$32,257 … Harvey Mudd College
$32,209 … Swarthmore College
and higher than;
$26,574 … Dartmouth College
$24,604 … Cornell University
$23,234 … University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
$21,938 … Tufts University
these figures make zero sense. Yale spends more than 100k and 2x more than Harvard. nope. Yale must be including some other high dollar items in its calculation that others are not.
must be fake news - that said, it is self-reported so all have the opportunity to pump the numbers…
Might be that Harvard has 80% more students than Yale. That said, Princeton has 50% fewer than Yale.
Spending per student is meaningless unless we are comparing apples to apples, which is very difficult to do since many universities (mostly private) manipulate data to make themselves look better. How does UCLA spend twice as much as Cal? I wonder! Could it be because Cal has no medical school or hospital, which usually costs anywhere from 50-75% of a university’s total operating budget, and UCLA is actually including the cost of its medical complex in its calculation? That is unusual for a public university. Generally speaking, only private universities take such misleading, self-serving, and cavalier liberties with data. Some of those universities that spend more than $50k/student are likely including medical center spending. Also, larger universities in areas with a lower cost of living will do terribly in this sort of survey as it fails to capture lower costs that result from economies of scale and significantly lower costs of living.
Looking at endowment makes better sense because it is more tangible. However, the official endowment figures for the year ending June 30, 2017 have not yet been released.
@Alexandre, there seems to be a lot of predicted overlap when comparing the schools in the 2016 endowment data in posting #4 and the 2015 student expenditure data in postings #16 and 18.
Instructional spending per student, in many instances, doesn’t seem to correlate with the US News ranking or the perceived quality of education. The fact that #2 Amherst’s instructional spending is ~36% less than that of #1 Williams, or that Davidson’s expenditures were * less than half * of Williams yet Davidson is still ranked in the US News top 10, is not what most would have expected.
Nor would anyone have expected Duke’s educational spending to be ~ 47% less than that of Yale but their US News rank is #9 and # 3 respectively.
18 Hamilton's instructional spending is only ~ 24% less than that of Williams.
12 Vassar ~ 30 % < Williams
12 Colby ~50% < Williams
12 Colgate ~40% < Williams
10 Davidson ~ 53% < Williams
8 Carleton ~ 35% < Williams
8 Claremont Mckenna ~ 35% < Williams
6 Middlebury ~ 40% < Williams
3 Swarthmore ~ 23% < Williams
2 Amherst ~ 36% < Williams
National universities ranked in the USNWR top 10 spend, on average, ~$75K per student on instruction.
National universities ranked 11-20, spend, on average, ~$47K per student on instruction.
National universities ranked 21-30, spend, on average, ~$30K per student on instruction.
Schools in the USNWR top 30 seem to spend up to ~10X as much as schools ranked in the 220s.
So, it appears to me that there is a correlation. Now, it may be confounded by various factors that affect some kinds of schools more than others. There is a lot of variance in the spending levels of some closely-ranked schools. Different universities follow two different accounting standards (GASB and FASB). Regional costs of living and economies of scale must be influencing the numbers. Nevertheless, it stands to reason that more spending tends to buy more quality (ceteris paribus, and at least up to a point.)
“these figures make zero sense. Yale spends more than 100k and 2x more than Harvard. nope.”
Harvard has far more graduate students than Yale. It is likely that Harvard spends relatively more of its endowment on research, and research is expensive.
Thus, on the teaching/instructional side Yale spends relatively more of its endowment per student than Harvard.
“How does UCLA spend twice as much as Cal? I wonder! Could it be because Cal has no medical school or hospital, which usually costs anywhere from 50-75% of a university’s total operating budget, and UCLA is actually including the cost of its medical complex in its calculation? That is unusual for a public university. Generally speaking, only private universities take such misleading, self-serving, and cavalier liberties with data.”
It appears UCLA is gaming the system to appeal to USNWR ranking metrics. Is it any wonder why they are climbing the undergraduate ratings there? This thread also proves that spending/student is difficult to measure because so many universities/colleges are not honest when it comes to reporting figures.
“National universities ranked in the USNWR top 10 spend, on average, ~$75K per student on instruction.
National universities ranked 11-20, spend, on average, ~$47K per student on instruction.
National universities ranked 21-30, spend, on average, ~$30K per student on instruction.
Schools in the USNWR top 30 seem to spend up to ~10X as much as schools ranked in the 220s.”
Perhaps these numbers shouldn’t be trusted at all since so many schools are dishonest about figures…
Putting up new buildings and modernizing old buildings is expensive. I suspect some of that spending per student that’s not spending on the faculty might be part of that. Yale created two new dorm complexes (what they call colleges) recently, I suspect that’s part of their calculation.