<p>Wow, the parents forum is becoming the "forum of links to the NY Times," ha ha. </p>
<p>Anyway, the NYT did a column on rising college costs and why colleges have been unable, unwilling or uninterested in containing them. The article focuses on my Alma Mater, which is also the school my son currently attends. </p>
<p>For clarification, Lafayette College has historically been among the top 3% of all colleges and universities in Endowment Per Student. The college is in NO danger of going under, even after the market crashed last year. </p>
<p>I'm posting two links here - one is to the NYT column, but the second is Dr Weiss's response/clarification of the article. He doesn't think he was mis-quoted, but he thinks the author missed the point of what he was trying to say, which is that colleges are have a unique mission, small LACs an even more unique mission, and that they can't be analyzed the same way as a normal business. Please read Dr Weiss's statement before commenting, because I think he makes some really good points. </p>
<p>I read the NY piece yesterday and the lafayette piece just now, and , although I think they both list the things colleges are spending more on, I don’t think either really addresses the WHY of why total costs are rising.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the mechanism that holds most consumer prices down is the reality of the consumer forking over the money. In the college cost game, the total “cost”, seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the price actually paid by the majority of attendees.<br>
What do I care if the sticker price for x school is $55k if I am only writing checks for 10K a year?? In fact, the bigger “discount” a family gets, the higher the perceived value of the product–That is, most of us would much rather get a 30K “discount” off of $40k price tag that a 10K discount of a 20k price tag.
This applies not just to financial aid but to merit aid. My family doesn’t qualify for a dollar of need based aid, but evaluated very carefully the merit offers that were made, to much the same effect.</p>
<p>In short, without the pressure of parents actually having to pay the costs, there is no real pressure to contain those costs.</p>
<p>I agree with DeirdreTours … at some point the cost exceeds even the (high) value Americans place on a well-rounded college education. I agree with Dr. Weiss’ points. But it would be hard to accept them as appropriate if the four-year cost of a Lafayette education exceeded a million dollars.</p>
<p>Actually, as two-time full fare payer, I don’t think that the pressure to economize comes from parents having to fork over $200k per student. It may in fact work in the opposite direction.
For example, if I pay $50k per year, I am less likely to tolerate certain economies of scale such as larger sections and fewer small discussion classes; I am more likely to demand that tenure ladder professors rather than adjuncts teach the classes my kids attend; I am more likely to demand better accommodation, more amenities, etc…</p>
<p>When I first came to this country, Boston U and NEU were far behind in terms of prestige. Their presidents made a huge effort to attract better known profs, and more high achieving students. They actually reduced rather than increased the number of students attending BU and NEU (defying economy of scale thinking) and built more dorms in order to attract non-local students. Some of these dorms are more luxurious than what my S experienced at Harvard. Both BU and NEU succeeded in their mission. A friend of mine who began teaching at NEU in a humanities field over 20 years ago told me recently that she has seen a huge rise in the caliber of students in her classes. These successes came at great cost to the two universities: new buildings, new faculty, new programs; and fewer students.</p>
<p>You can demand all you want. But unless you’re giving the school a couple of million dollars a year, what you have to say is pretty moot unless there is a real threat of a mass exodus of kids. As has been pointed out, the higher the price tag, the more prestigious something is perceived (think designer bags, clothes, etc).</p>
<p>I don’t see a mass exodus of students from HYPS, do you? On the contrary, there has been an increase in applications.
Despite generous financial aid packages, the percentage of full payers at these schools has not budged. One wonders why… One does not have to have millions to “demand”; one just has to take the $200k to some other school. There are still plenty that are eager to take that tuition money. </p>
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<p>That reinforces my point. People will be willing to pay more for something that is considered more prestigious. There is little pressure on colleges to economize unless they are hit by a financial crisis and a 30% drop in their endowment. Until this financial crisis, the pressure was all in the other direction. The colleges that will suffer the most are those with small endowments and which will be instituting economies that will make them seem not necessarily better deals than state universities.</p>
<p>marite, I think your point is also true, but doesn’t negate mine. They are probably both forces pushing the costs higher. But, I do truly believe that if there were no such think as merit awards and financial aid there would be a radically different pricing stucture in higher education. There simply aren’t enough folks able/willing to pay 200k per student to support the number of school spaces officially marketed at that price.</p>
<p>I found this NYT article poorly researched and the writer should have challenged the Lafayette president more on “why” he could not rein in costs. </p>
<p>I work in the automotive industry which is going through a dramatic restructuring that needed to happen, colleges will have that day of reckoning also, especialy the private universities, where in some most cases, 50 % of the student body is paying full fare.</p>
<p>When will this day of reckoning occurr? I think as rising sophmores and juniors see (as they saw this year), more seniors not getting jobs, or having excessive debt that precludes them from going to grad school, and if this recession continues to linger, there will be backlash against these school’s costs.</p>
<p>a recent article I read showed that if a college graduate doesn’t get a good job after he graduates, they are behind the earning curve the rest of their life.</p>
<p>The more I think about, I actually think that marite’s population (quality at any cost) and the population I was referring to (not paying majority of cost, so unaffected by total cost), combined together are the overwhelming force behind rapidly rising costs.</p>
<p>Actually, some colleges could have a whole student body paying entirely full fare without necessarily sacrificing the quality. The student body would be much less diverse, but it would not be second-rate. Not all colleges could do so; this is why they hold out the lure of merit pay. Or want to have student only from the same SES background, which is why they offer financial aid. But what makes these colleges attractive, especially the LACs, is what makes it difficult to achieve economies of scale. And the race to compete with top schools with great endowments leads to spending on all sorts of amenities unknown when I was in college. Even before the advent of cell phones and internets, each dorm room had to have a landline. When I was in college, there was a pay phone serving the whole floor. Colleges compete on which has the better food, better dorms, better labs (for fewer students) more small classes, career advising (whassat? totally unknown in my days). One just has to read the college tour reports on CC to see what attracts students and their families.</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that you (the paying parent) cannot “punish” colleges with high COAs by going elsewhere, without potential life-long consequences to those you care about most. It is not like boycotting BMWs until their prices come down by buying a Toyota, and then buying a cheaper BMW later, after BMW gets the consumer “message.”</p>
<p>You get one 4-year shot to put your kid through college, so you are stuck with today’s costs of whatever is out there. Since nearly every single decent private college is $40K-$50k, then of course you would rather get the Harvard value than the St. Nowhere value for essentially the same price.</p>
<p>Changes will come when St. Nowhere charges $20K versus Harvard’s $50K.</p>
<p>^^ That is why the colleges that are most vulnerable are not necessarily the most expensive ones. They are the ones with somewhat less prestige (not necessarily even Tier 2 or 3), smaller endowments and less financial aid. Rising costs, little financial or merit aid will make families look more favorably on state schools.
We’ve had many cases of such calculation on CC even before the financial crisis. One case was that of Songman who balked at paying full fare at Skidmore when his son could attend UMass-Amherst more cheaply.
we also have parents telling their children they will pay for HYPS but not a non-Ivy League school, not matter how well regarded in academic circles.</p>
<p>If you look at some other 2nd and 3rd tier schools, there are still some that are not asking for 40k+ yet. For example, Bridgewater College in VA is about 34,400. 22% are getting an average of about 10,900 in merit aid. This brings the cost to roughly 23,400. That is about what our instate flagship costs. If a student does not want a large research focused school, a school like this might be a good choice.</p>
<p>MiPerson80, did your read Dr Weiss’s response to the article? His whole point is that colleges can’t be analyzed or run the same as regular businesses or the automotive industry. From Dr Weiss’s response to the NYT author, Mr Lieber:</p>
<p>“It troubles me that Mr. Lieber understands higher education in fairly conventional business terms. Although there are units within our operations that function as businesses, colleges and universities are neither businesses nor consumer products. Our management objective is not to increase shareholder value or maximize profitability, even if one of our major goals is to maintain fiscal discipline. We are dedicated to other goals and have for generations served them well…”</p>
<p>Yes the decision was made by my son actually to go to UMASS Amherst versus Skidmore . A good decision now looking back. However, his decision not to attend Kenyon he now regrets somewhat. I guess he realized that he was not mature enough to attend a college far away from home. In no way was his decision a negative reaction to Skidmore as a college. He loved Skidmore , the students there, etc. It is was strictly financial based on the fact that we asked him to take some loans for the two LAC’s schools but said we would pay for the tuition at UMASS in full. So while today he is debt free and out of college he is beginning to notice in a small way the difference between a high quality LAC education and a state school. In the end all worked out ,but at the time you could feel the angst that arose over the college search process. It was tangible!</p>