<p>Getting in on this late. Hope everything I say hasn’t been said before but I think there should be a no-frills option at most colleges. Bare-bones old dorm, pay extra for sports, clubs and gym. I hope that doesn’t seem harsh but i think college has been following the tastes of the well-to-do with brand new health clubs, great dorms, etc. and the bills have followed suit. The European model gets the kids out in 3 years - you just study what you need for your major, many if not most kids live at home or off-campus. I know this isn’t as rewarding for the kids as our system but it would give our kids a chance to attend the school of their choice with a lot less debt.</p>
<p>Every taxpayer should demand the actual numbers behind their state’s public university system. Some systems are very transparent; for example, the NU system in Nebraska: [University</a> of Nebraska Administration - Budget & Salary Information](<a href=“http://nebraska.edu/administration/business-and-finance/budget-information.html]University”>Budget & Salary Information). But others are not. Until you know where the money is going, how can you know whether it is being spent wisely?</p>
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<p>In the private sector, that expensive technology is used everywhere because it brings overall costs down.</p>
<p>“For prestige privates . . . They are now less expensive than at any time since 1980.”</p>
<p>FALSE.</p>
<p>Coupla little points.</p>
<p>Colleges (at least my daughter’s) seem to make money on study abroad options. The European university my daughter attended charges way less tuition than her college and I know her room and board with a family wasn’t expensive either but we had to pay full tuition for that semester. By sending large numbers of kids abroad, the colleges are able to cram more kids into the schools. That’s why it’s often easier to get into a school as a transfer student - there are some dropouts but mainly juniors are studying abroad.</p>
<p>My friend was told by a college “Singapore pays full price”. I don’t think we need to fault ourselves about not keeping up with kids from other countries. If you skim off the cream of a billion Indians and a billion Chinese a year, of course you’re going to have a lot of geniuses competing with our kids.</p>
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<p>The statement that faculty at Canadian universities “are on average paid higher than US faculty” is true but possibly misleading. Faculty pay scales are flatter in Canada. While faculty at the University of Toronto and McGill make more than faculty at less prestigious and less research-intensive schools, those differences are relatively small. In the U.S. it’s not uncommon for faculty at the most prestigious universities to make 3 or 4 times as much as faculty at less prestigious schools, and in individual cases even more. The lowest-paid faculty in the U.S. are paid less than their Canadian counterparts, and the average for all faculty in the U.S. is slightly lower than in Canada (though that difference is relatively small); but at the top end, faculty at top U.S. schools make far more than their Canadian counterparts. Most (but not all) of the discussion on this thread has been about costs at the high end of the market.</p>
<p>Just thought of another item… how many of us parents have nodded happily on the tour when the guide mentioned the writing center, where students can get help with papers? D1 has a part time job in her school’s writing center – and it is not a work study job, so the college is paying her salary.</p>
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This is a very interesting point. I’ve wondered why colleges push study abroad so hard at information sessions. This might be the reason…</p>
<p>Gosh, I have to agree with a lot of the above. S is in class of '15. Do you know how many folks have asked me about the dorms at his intended school. Few ask about the academics, most want to know “is he getting a suite?” , “a private bath”, “how is the workout room?”, blah, blah, blah. So the cinderblock dorms I stayed in many years ago are so old school. It is all about looks, appearances, lots of places to eat, etc. It all costs money. On top of all that you have rising health insurance, rising insurance to protect the school from the kid who drinks too much and falls into a como on school property, etc.</p>
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<p>Absolutely not true. There are gigantic differences in salaries across Canadian schools, and the top Canadians have absolutely no problem competing with top US schools. I know, we hire almost every year.</p>
<p>Mamom, I agree with you. When I went to college (back in the dark ages), only the truly wealthy, not the upper middle class kids lived in anything other than the standard 2 to a room, hall bath dorm. Now, it seems like every kid wants the luxury college lifestyle. </p>
<p>Noimagination – I agree the schools make money on years abroad. Maybe some of the school people would like to weigh in.</p>
<p>In college education, the service has not changed much in 35 years.</p>
<p>I haven’t attended a 4 year college- however when my oldest first attended a private college 10 years ago I noted that she had a private room. Same price as other dorm rooms.
All dorms had printers & computers as did the library & the cafeteria for students free & easy access. Not even counting the hardware in the computer lab or any of the other buildings.
The food in the cafeteria was really good. Maybe they amped it up for parents visits & I admit if that was the only place you ever ate, that could get old, but 20 kinds of hot sauce on the counter could spice it up a bit.</p>
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<p>from: [College</a> Affordability: Tuition Tax Credits vs. Saving Incentives](<a href=“http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/college/college.htm]College”>http://www.house.gov/jec/fiscal/tx-grwth/college/college.htm)</p>
<p>The federal financial aid system has masked the costs of tuition from many, if not most, tuition payers. </p>
<p>It is analogous to health care costs. Patients know what their co-pay is, but have no idea how much a given medical test costs, or a doctor visit, etc. In fact, if you asked the hospital for a cost breakdown, they probably could not even provide it. Insurance covers it all, so no one knows the prices and no one price compares.</p>
<p>So, since so many people do not know the college list prices, they don’t really price compare on the full cost. So the colleges have no reason or incentive to hold costs down. Where else do you buy a commodity, but have to show your W-2 to know what your price will be versus the next guy? Nowhere.</p>
<p>Why has college tuition outpaced inflation every year for 40 years? Because of the federal financial aid system.</p>
<p>Emeraldkitty – if she had a private room at same price as other rooms, I suspect other rooms had suite ammenities, or something else. Could be wrongs.</p>
<p>or just the usual journalistic sensationalism?</p>
<p>[10</a> Public Colleges with Insanely Luxurious Dorms](<a href=“10 Public Colleges With the Most Luxurious Dorms | The Fiscal Times”>10 Public Colleges With the Most Luxurious Dorms | The Fiscal Times)</p>
<p>Large public research university. Principal reasons for the size of the tuition increases here:</p>
<p>1) Declining state funding for university education. The lost state money has to be replaced from tuition. This is one of two major cost factors.</p>
<p>2) Increased numbers of non-faculty support staff. Some of these positions are necessary for increased regulatory compliance (including financial aid processing). Some of the positions provide direct assistance to students: e.g., positions in writing centers, tech-support centers, or student-athlete academic support. I think some of the added positions reflect administrative empire-building, though. Within the departments, the number of support staff has decreased (in ours, by about 50% over the past 10 years); however, at the level of the colleges (multiple departments) and in the finance/ops area, staffing has increased considerably. We used to have a 2:1 ratio of faculty to support staff (about 15 years ago). Now the ratio is 1:1, with essentially no change in the number of faculty members.</p>
<p>3) Increased health care costs.</p>
<p>At the most expensive private schools, roughly half are full-pay students. For the other half, the cost after average need based aid isn’t $55K, it’s more like $25K, roughly in line with the full sticker price at many state flagships. </p>
<p>I think the costs reflect changes in the distribution of wealth. The MSRPs at private schools are set to what their richest families are willing to pay, which is a lot.</p>
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<li><p>The main reason schools love study abroad is they can have more students enrolled if some of them aren’t on campus every term. </p></li>
<li><p>As for costs:</p></li>
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<p>a) A significant reason for some of the cost increases is better pay for the many staff. Like healthcare, until fairly recently, people who worked for schools were not paid that well. I learned a lot about this issue in the series of strikes by blue collar workers at various schools, all the way back to when I was in school (and we had no janitors for an entire term). </p>
<p>b) Inflation. If you go back to 1960, a good salary was $5k. $10k was a more than good living. People earned less. And they had less. One tv. One car. Smaller houses that weren’t renovated. This is the same problem pensions have: you make a promise back when salaries are $11k a year to pay a percentage of your pay at retirement and 30 years later the pay scale is 4 times as high. In this regard, I’m reminded of an idiotic remark made by an NC congresswoman who is on the education subcommittee. She said back in her day she worked to go to school. She didn’t mention that her school then cost a few hundred dollars for a year - people looked that up. That meant she could work at a low wage job and still pay for most or all of her schooling. Inflation has meant you can work at a decent job in the summer and not make a dent in your college cost. </p>
<p>Like others, I’m amazed at the breadth of what is now taught. Whole areas of study now exist: biomedical for one. I remember when the first American Studies department was set up.</p>
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<p>Purdue’s Queen Elizabeth II Dorm (aka First Street Towers) definitely deserves to be in the list. The cost is beyond funny… Some of the other ones were ho-hum luxury wise…</p>
<p>In terms of costs, I fondly remember paying OOS at University of Louisiana the measly sum of $1200/yr in 1982. Starting salaries were upper 20’s to 30k in that time (Silicon Valley CompSci grad degrees).</p>
<p>Fast forward, Cajun State is now $13k/year OOS and starting salaries out west are maybe 3 times higher… The school has built a few new buildings but enrollment is about stable give or take. </p>
<p>I would guess the disappearance of state support may be the biggest factor - they surely did not build Louvre style libraries or Saks inspired EECS buildings (unlike a certain university in Michigan :))… </p>
<p>In contrast, the Michigan university (Oakland U) DW graduated from (among others) only went up in tuition by a factor of 2 from 1985 to today ($12k/year OOS grad to $24k/year OOS grad). U of Michigan also has stayed ‘low’ price increase wise even tho their prices in the 80’s were beyond insane. I guess that may show that if state support is low to begin with, subsequent cuts did not impact them as much as cuts to other states that funded better to begin with.</p>
<p>Michigan may be an ‘outlier’ tho…</p>
<p>I know scholarships has already been discussed, but think about this little fact. (I’ll let someone else find an interesting graph to supports this idea.) Years and years ago, only very wealthy people sent their kids to college. All the "other’ kids needed to stay home and help around the house/farm, etc. But these days, many colleges are far more diverse and accept from a wide socio-economic. That means scholarships. </p>
<p>Of course, scholarships aren’t enough, so the govt introduced low cost loans. And, guess what? Those low cost loans are generally paid for by increased college costs. Yes, it is totally true and can be supported by historical studies showing how these low cost bills actually are responsible for making college costs soar. (Please, someone else do that. It’s very interesting to see the causal relationship between low-cost college loans and college cost increases, but I can’t do that research now.)</p>