Swarthmore professor's essay: "Could college cost less?"

Parents Forum
1

<p>This Swarthmore history professor's blog piece makes an interesting counterpoint to Dean Dad's essay (which I posted a few days ago.) </p>

<p>Swarthmore is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the anonymous Dean Dad's public community college in many ways. </p>

<p>Dean Dad's cc is Open Admissions with no endowment to speak of, a public institution in an era of declining public funding. </p>

<p>Swarthmore is one of the most selective colleges in the country, with a huge private endowment--and, I would imagine that the endowment has been growing at a healthy rate in recent years, assuming their investment managers have been able to keep returns on a par with those of other college inverstment managers.</p>

<p>Interestingly, both Prof. Burke and Dean Dad bemoan cost factors outside their respective institutions' control and both make a strong case for more transparency about discounting practices.</p>

<p>Burke has some pretty choice words:</p>

<p>
[quote]
More transparency would also expose discounting practices to clearer view. This might make for some uncomfortable moments, when it becomes clear that virtually all private institutions follow a pricing strategy that might fairly be called “soak the rich”, but I think it’s again only fair to make that fully visible to the paying customers.

[/quote]
</p>

<p><a href="http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=109%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=109&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>Thanks for the link to the blog, wisteria. I am more in tune with its line of argument than with the ones advanced in the earlier thread.
At any rate, I agree with the Swarthmore prof's argument about costs. There may be some waste in the way universities operate, but its effects on costs is probably marginal, and ditto the savings that would come from eliminating waste.
The more important costs are due to outside factors, in particular health insurance costs for both an aging faculty and for students. There are not many positive incentives for faculty to retire, but plenty to remain at work, even past 70. The demographic profile of students has changed also. Thanks to ADA, for example, more students with physical or learning disabilities are able to attend college; their presence calls for more support than was provided in my day. Mental health support has also had to be increased in the wake of suicides and lawsuits. Another factor not included in the blog is the expansion of sports as a result of Title IX. We would not want to roll back any of these advances, but they entail significant costs for universities that cannot be made up through waste-cutting.
Compared to today's dorms, mine was definitely no-frills. No wifi or even internet connection, no phone outlet in individual rooms (there was one payphone by floor), no minifridges and microwaves. The same parents who lament college costs, however, can be found panning the housing facilities at one college for their shabbiness and lauding those at another for the frills that were not available only a couple of decades ago.
I am not so sure about the "soak the rich" argument. Even a student paying full fare is not paying the full costs of his or her education. But suppose a college stopped differential pricing; those who would be barred from attending are those who are the most cost-conscious and depend on financial aid in the form of need-blind and merit aid. Expensive colleges would revert to what they had once been: playgrounds for the rich.</p>

3

<p>
[quote]
I am not so sure about the "soak the rich" argument. Even a student paying full fare is not paying the full costs of his or her education.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>True at a small handful of generously endowed colleges like Swarthmore, Williams, Amherst, HYP, but NOT true at most high-sticker-price private colleges that are out there. </p>

<p>Endowment income per student is just not high enough at MOST private colleges, so full-fare students are indeed paying more than the full costs of their education at such colleges. This is especially true if said full-fare student is majoring in a low-cost "chalk and talk" discipline, especially if the discipline is an area with an abundant oversupply of PhD's willing to work as adjuncts for small salaries and no benefits. (Poorly endowed private colleges are increasingly turning to such measures. Example: a high sticker price college hires an adjunct for $3,200 and NO benefits to teach a one-term required course for upperclass majors. Class size is "limited to 30," though the prof graciously allows a few more students in. List price at this college is about $40K per year, of which tuition is around $28K, so each one term class costs a full-pay student $3,500 in tuition. Even allowing for the fact that the college has other costs of providing the class besides the adjunct's salary--like ultilities and space costs, it doesn't take many full-pay students in that adjunct's class before it becomes a real "cash-cow" for the college.)</p>

<p>So, indeed, there are some full-fare-paying students in low cost chalk-and-talk disciplines at many poorly endowed but high-sticker-price private colleges who are paying way more than their share of the cost of their education.</p>

<p>Colleges like HYPAWS are essentially industry price-leaders that set the sticker price. Other private colleges, whether or not they have much endowment, feel that they should set comparable sticker prices, or else they look like they are offering an inferior product. Whether or not their product is "inferior," they certainly spend much less to provide it than do HYPAWS, because they don't have much endowment, and so the sticker price is indeed quite a bit more than the proportionate cost of education.</p>

<p>Depending on one's theory of distributive justice (Rawls, Nozick, Bentham, et al.), that cross-subsidization may or may not be appropriate, but there is a case to be made for at least being honest and transparent about it.</p>

<p>EDIT: When my kids were little, they attended community day care centers. One of them was a parent co-op with a sliding fee scale. We set the budget every year and tried our best to balance a lot of competing needs: desire to pay our dedicated and caring teachers a decent wage and health benefits, desire to have a range of income levels among the families in the center and to keep tuition fees affordable. </p>

<p>We made a lot of compromises and didn't meet any of these goals as well as we would have liked to, but we tried hard and the process was at least transparent. We all had to vote on the budget and tuition scale each year. And we tried to do what we could with creative fund-raising and asking parents to do a lot of volunteer work (like repairs, accounting, building play equipment) and also parents helped out in the classroom a few hours each week to supplement our paid professionals.</p>

<p>Sadly, we could make no claim to being "need-blind." We had no endowment, no cushion. Some families were very low-income families subsidized by a state-child-care program that paid much less than the overall share of the cost. By law, we could not ask these families to pay more than their state grant provided. (What's more they didn't have the money to do so, even if we had asked.) There was a limit on how many such families we could take. If we had more full-fare, top sticker price families, we could take more of the subsidized families.</p>

<p>I sometimes think of the parallels between that budgeting/tuition-setting process for the daycare co-op and a college.</p>

4

<p>Wisteria:</p>

<p>I am not sure I quite follow your argument. Can you elaborate?
If a small private college is not well endowed, tuition certainly must be a larger proportion of its income and must cover a larger proportion of costs. But I don't follow that, as a result, full fare students are paying more than the full costs of their education. It is indeed possible. But a small private college that charges a much or nearly as much as ASW has fixed costs besides salaries.
It's true that chalk and talk courses don't cost as much as science classes. But liberal arts colleges need to have sciences and hence labs. Indeed, the trend is to require more rather than fewer science classes. So poorly endowed colleges are at a real disadvantage there. I don't know if many scientists are adjuncts. It seems there are more of them in the chalk and talk disciplines.</p>

5

<p>
[quote]
I am not sure I quite follow your argument. Can you elaborate?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>A college with a small endowment and limited alumni giving is very much like that parent co-op daycare center that I was describing, in the sense that total tuition collected must essentially cover total costs, because other sources of revenue are negligible, and because budgets have to balance.</p>

<p>Thus in such institutions, AVERAGE tuition collected per student must essentially equal AVERAGE expenditure per student.</p>

<p>In low endowment colleges, there is just no other way to balance the budget than by keeping those two averages in balance, just the same as in our little parent co-op daycare.</p>

<p>Because of sliding-scale tuition fee at the daycare, some parents paid tuition was LESS than the average cost. Necessarily, then, others paid tuition that was MORE than the average cost.</p>

<p>The exact same arithmetic applies to private colleges with minimal endowments. Their revenue comes almost entirely from tuition. If they are discounting some students' tuitions (based on need and/or merit), then the full-pay students must necessarily pay more than the average cost of education in order to keep the budget balanced.</p>

<p>There's no other way around it for a college that depends primarily on tuition revenues (which is the case for the overwhelming majority of private colleges. There are only a handful with significant endowment per student.)</p>

6

<p>Marite:</p>

<p>I've got a simple little spreadsheet that provides the key data: net tuition per student, spending per student, endowment spending per student, etc. All it takes is finding the 2004 Financial Report for an LAC (not always an easy task!)</p>

<p>So far, for a small sample of about a dozen schools, I've found a range of per student spending from $25,744 (Muhlenberg) to $68,304 (Swarthmore).</p>

<p>These two extremes result from endowment spending per student of $1,404 (Muhlenberg) to $29,155 (Swarthmore).</p>

<p>I can't get an exact read on Muhlenberg's total per student revenue because they lump room and board in with other enterprises like the bookstore. However, it appears that Muhlenberg's net student revenues cover virtually all of the college's operating budget. </p>

<p>Muhlenberg's pricing strategy starts with a relatively low list price -- some $6,000 below the top of the market. That's a strategy that is automatically less of a "soak the rich" plan because, even if you qualify for no need-based aid, you pay less. Tends to favor upper-middle class customers who get squeezed by colleges with very high sticker prices and large amounts of need-based aid.</p>

<p>I'm a little stymied because the types of schools that would be really interesting to look at would be the Gettysburgs, Dickinsons, etc. where effective enrollment management is critical and where there are real tradeoffs in the "quality" versus "revenue" enrollment decisions. Alas, these colleges don't make their annual financial reports easy to find. If anyone has an interesting representative LAC and can find a 2004 annual report, just post a link. University reports are useless because, in some cases, the education component is such a miniscule part of the revenue stream that it's debatable to what extent those corporations really should be viewed as schools. Take a look at Emory's financial reports (with and without the hospital chain they own and operate) for a real eye-opener.</p>

7

<p>To address marite's other points, salary & benefits are by far the largest single expenditure in college budgets. Figures vary, partly because accounting varies. For a typical example, Mount Holyoke says that 65% of its costs are salaries and benefits.
<a href="http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/970926/budget.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/csj/970926/budget.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As for use of adjuncts in science courses, I think marite is right that there are fewer of those than in the humanities and social sciences. (Our local community college employs quite a few adjuncts to teach science classes, but those are primarily night and weekend classes taught by moonlighting scientists and engineers with day jobs that provide their benefits. A college offering day classes is apt to have a harder time finding adjuncts to teach science classes than humanities and social science classes.</p>

<p>But even without the use of low-cost adjuncts, even assuming a college uses only full-time faculty to teach classes, if a college derives virtually all its income from tuition and charges some students less than sticker price, the ones paying the sticker are necessarily paying more than the average cost of education.</p>

8

<p>Thanks, Wisteria. I see the logic of your argument but I am not sure I am entirely persuaded. To be sure, the costs of living in Oregon are not the same as in the Northeast of Socal, but there are some fairly fixed costs nonetheless that must be met. I also suspect that in cheaper to live areas, there may be fewer adjuncts available because there is not the abundance of colleges where such adjuncts could string together enough part time work to make a decent living.
Our day-care center--one of the most expensive in our city--also offered scholarships. But it also depended on fund-raising as well as a certain amount of subsidizing for the poorer families.
I'll have to think a little more about it.:)</p>

9

<p>As a follow-up, here are some of Emory's revenue streams:</p>

<p>net tuition: $211 million
research grants and contracts: $245 million</p>

<p>med services (Emory owned physician practices): $119 million</p>

<p>net patient services (the hospitals): $1,300 million</p>

<hr>

<p>What is Emory's primary business segment?</p>

10

<p>My connection to CC is very slow today, so I posted a response to Wisteria's post that appeared quite a time ago, before further info was provided by interesteddad and Wisteria. So I apologize if I sound confusing and confused as a result.</p>

<p>It is easier to compare LACs with LACs because research universities have different costs and revenue streams. So, bearing that in mind, when Muhlenberg reports that the per student spending is $25,744, what does it cover? athletic facilities? heating? depreciation? maintenance? administration? health center? or just classroom-related expenditures? Do colleges report per student spending using the same criteria? It's hard to imagine that Swat is spending $68,304 vs. Muhlenberg's $25,744 (I have not visited Muhlenberg so I cannot comment on its facilities).</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
I also suspect that in cheaper to live areas, there may be fewer adjuncts available because there is not the abundance of colleges where such adjuncts could string together enough part time work to make a decent living.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Many adjuncts are secondary-earner "trailing spouses" whose spouses have a job with benefits and a fulltime salary, possibly at the same college as the adjunct. Some adjuncts combine their adjunct teaching with free-lance writing, consulting, or other flexible jobs. So not all adjuncts need to "string together" teaching gigs at a bunch of nearby colleges. Actually, I know one "adjunct assistant professor" who had actually had a full teaching load of 5 courses each term at a single college, so she didn't have to travel to nearby colleges. Incidentally, she was in the sciences and some of her classes had labs as well as lectures and recitations, which she conducted without lab assistants or TAs. The college just paid her five times the adjunct per course rate, no benefits. (Fortunately, her husband had a job with benefits.)</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
when Muhlenberg reports that the per student spending is $25,744, what does it cover?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That figure is the entire "operating expense" line of the Financial Report divided by the number of students. It is the total cost of operations and, therefore includes everything that appears as an operating expense: salaries, maintenance, the cost of food services, educational expense, athletic teams, health services, printing viewbooks, and so on and so forth. It does not include financial aid because those are treated as a reduction of revenue and, thus included in the "net tuition" line. Usually a college reports the full tuition (based on sticker price) reduced by the financial aid line to generate a "net tuition" that appears in the "operating revenues" section of the annual report (the accounting logic is that they never see the full sticker price revenue so only the amount they actually receive should be counted as revenue.)</p>

<p>The only "gray" area is that colleges generally finance new buildings with state bond issues at attractive rates -- whether these bonds are subsequently paid off with a lump sum from the endowment or not. So the "operating expense" does include the annual debt service on these bonds. The ultimate decision to retire the bonds early or not depends on the interest rates relative to the rate of return of the endowment investments. Even the most lavishly endowed colleges usually carry some debt for this reason -- because it is financially attractive to do so (they can borrow for less interest than they earn from investing the money).</p>

<p>Depreciation is also included, as it reduces one of the net expense lines in the annual report.</p>

<p>The only expenditures which would not be included would be certain non-operating expenses -- for example, the manangement fee for endowment investing. Or, in some cases, there are endowment gifts that stipulate some of the earnings to the college and some to other parties. Or, if someone gives a commercial rental building, there would be expenses to the endowment related to the operation of that building. Those endowment related expenses are stated in a separate portion of the financial report and are not included in the "operating expenses".</p>

<p>BTW, endowment spending shows up in the "Operating Revenues" section of the financial report as "Spending from Endowment" or something along those lines.</p>

13

<p>I don't understand why, at least for "prestige" colleges, colleges "should" cost less. Much of the prestige comes from the fact that they cost a lot, and that folks who can afford them, are willing to pay for it. In a market economy, when there are five purchasers for every good being sold, and you can't produce more goods, the thing to do is to raise the price, not lower it. And raising the price makes the good more rather than less desirable. Indeed, among prestige colleges, as the list price has gone up, so has the number of applicants, and, in the past 25-30 years, the percentage of full-freight customers who attend. I am sure you will see that continue, with tuition increases outstripping inflation until they approach the level of actual cost (however computed).</p>

<p>I can't see how that's a bad thing. If the school is, ah-hem, need-blind, those requiring aid don't pay a nickel more as a result, and those who can still pay full-freight have an even more prestigious product. It's good for everyone!</p>

<p>Whether it is good or not, that's what I expect we'll continue to see.</p>

<p>There's a lot of play in the numbers. Berea, with its $900 million endowment, provides full tuition scholarships (with work-study) for all of its students. Cooper Union, made up virtually of only high-cost engineering programs, does the same. Both did so when their endowments were much lower than they are today.</p>

<p>I saw one estimate that said that Harvard could provide free tuition to all of its undergraduates with a mere 1% additional off its endowment earnings. I have no idea whether that is true. But it is clear that a Williams or a Swarthmore or a Grinnell or a Smith could provide free tuition to all of their students if they wanted to - but they have other priorities. They make different choices - upon raising $400 million, Smith sunk $100 mil into scholarships, but almost $300 mil into the new engineering school, something they certainly didn't HAVE TO do. </p>

<p>But marketing 101 - what prestige ever comes to a product from being the least expensive?</p>

14

<p>
[quote]
But it is clear that a Williams or a Swarthmore or a Grinnell or a Smith could provide free tuition to all of their students if they wanted to - but they have other priorities.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Swarthmore could certainly make tuition, room, and board free. "All" they would have to do is reduce per student spending to $42,000 per year (about what Franklin & Marshall spends, a little more than Oberlin spends, a little less than Davidson spends.</p>

<p>Of course, to reduce their per student spending, they would have to take a big chunk out of the biggest line item (salaries). Fire half the faculty, close the health center at night, eliminate the counseling services, cut the Dean's Staff, and they could probably get there. But, then you would have a very different college, basically gutting what makes a high-end boutique college like Swarthmore attractive. </p>

<p>To what end? Why would you want to make it free to students who are perfectly happy to pay and, in fact, pay to subsidize those who can't pay? It's not like Swarthmore prices are out of line with other colleges. Its net tuition and fees per student are lower than Smith's and Haverford's, just $3000 more than F&M, and just $1000 or so more than Muhlenberg's.</p>

<p>In the short-term, Swarthmore could drive its acceptance rate and median SATs into Harvard territory by making it free. I would expect the applicant pool to be large and strong at that price. Long-term, the reduced student spending and inability to offer a product of today's quality would take a toll. "Making it free" is probably a better strategy for a well-endowed school with less current demand. Grinnell would be a perfect candidate. They already charge a low $20k in net tuition and spend at the low end ($46k). The have the biggest per student endowment of all LACs, but spend very little of it (only 2.3% per year). If they double their endowment spending to 4.6% (a reasonable number, in line with most colleges), they could almost make it free right now without reducing spending at all.</p>

<p>BTW, I'm not sure Smith could make it free. Not because they don't have a large endowment, but because the enrollment is so large. Free for 2700 students is a lot more expensive than free for 1400 students. </p>

<p>In fact, Smith is actively looking to reduce the size of the faculty (by 8%) and increase their net price tuition revenue (by increasing the loan components) because their tuition discounting has increased to the point where it threatens to put the budget out of equilibrium. Smith already has the second highest average per student fees I've seen (they sock it to you in room and board), behind only Haverford.</p>

15

<p>
[quote]
I don't understand why, at least for "prestige" colleges, colleges "should" cost less. Much of the prestige comes from the fact that they cost a lot, and that folks who can afford them, are willing to pay for it.
...
But marketing 101 - what prestige ever comes to a product from being the least expensive?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, at the high school level, some of the arguably most prestigious summer academic programs in the country are free: Research Science Institute (at MIT and Caltech) and the Telluride program in the humanities at Cornell and other sites. Their prestige comes, in part, from the fact that students can't "buy" their way in. There is only one way to get in and that's on merit.</p>

<p>Those programs are far more prestigious than paying to enroll in Harvard Summer School, which is expensive and not very selective in admitting high school students.</p>

<p>Another example: West Point is free but more prestigious than less selective tuition-charging military colleges like VMI and the Citadel.</p>

<p>U of Virginia is far more prestigious than a number of more expensive private colleges in Virginia.</p>

<p>There's lots of other examples, but this is all beside the point.</p>

<p>For my children, I'd be very happy for them to find a college like the co-op daycare center they once attended---a place to grow socially and intellectually, a diverse community of friendly kindred spirits testing their independence and exploring a bigger world together. There should be a team of supportive adults running the place who inspire and bring out the best in the younger generation, sharing their knowledge and their values, leading by example.</p>

<p>One of the values I hope the adults running the college transmit to my children is honesty and transparency.</p>

<p>That daycare was open and honest about the fact that some parents were paying more towards the cost of operating the center than others. </p>

<p>Our family was fortunate to be in a position to be paying more than the average cost of care there and I felt good about it--not because my tuition made the place more "presitigious" but because I knew the teachers were good and dedicated and caring people and I wanted to contribute our fair share towards making sure that they were fairly compensated for their work.</p>

<p>Because it was a co-op, the books were open to us. We knew the teacher pay scales and we were motivated to work creatively to figure out ways to stretch to make that compensation as large as we could, to contribute toward their health insurance (e.g., by use of parent volunteer work, by finding less expensive places to buy supplies, by fixing up an inexpensive space to cut down on rental costs.) It wasn't a snazzy, fancy place, but it was a wonderful place for kids and parents and teachers to learn and grow together. We didn't cut corners by creating a category of "adjunct" teachers and asking them to go without health insurance. 80% of the daycare budget went to teacher salaries and we wanted those teachers to understand how much we valued their dedicated caring for our children.</p>

16

<p>RSI is free to students, but it's not cost free to the hosting institutions, MIT and CEE. The list of sponsors and donors is quite impressive.</p>

<p>I am a bit stunned at the difference in spending per student between Muhlenberg and Swarthmore. Is the more than 2:1 ratio reflected in salaries, facilities, and other aspects of college experience?</p>

17

<p>
[quote]
I am a bit stunned at the difference in spending per student between Muhlenberg and Swarthmore. Is the more than 2:1 ratio reflected in salaries, facilities, and other aspects of college experience?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I'm not the least bit stunned. It is a financial reality. Colleges with huge endowments like Swarthmore can afford to spend far more than they take in in net tuition revenue. </p>

<p>But Muhlenberg is far more typical of private colleges--it has a tiny endowment, so it can't spend nearly as much per student.</p>

<p>I don't know about Muhlenberg, but if it is like the typical high-sticker-price-but-low-endowment private colleges with which I'm familiar, it probably cuts expenditures in a number of ways compared to Swarthmore:</p>

<p>-lower salaries
-heavier teaching loads for faculty (e.g., 5 or 6 courses per year instead of 4)
-fewer very small seminar classes
-less generous sabbatical policies
-less money to support student research
-less generous release-time support for faculty to innovate and develop new courses
-less state-of-the-art science equipment
-student health center provides fewer services
-library has fewer journal subscriptions, fewer books, & library building is smaller
-less manicured building & grounds (Swarthmore is an arboretum!)
-fewer free cultural events on campus (e.g., public lectures and musical performances from distinguished guests)
-less support for student activities and campus social events </p>

<p>Just from looking at Muhlenberg's and Swarthmore's websites, certain things jump right out. </p>

<p>Swarthmore uses only full-time faculty and 97% have PhDs. </p>

<p>Muhlenberg has 155 full-time and 99 part-time faculty. Only 85% of Muhlenberg's faculty have Ph.D.s.</p>

<p>Muhlenberg has a big accounting, business, and economics program. That's a VERY cheap program to run. Those classes can be large, they are chalk & talk, and adjunct accounting & business faculty are very readily available.</p>

<p>Muhlenberg also has a big education program. Those classes can also be large and lend themselves to instruction by adjunct faculty (especially supervision of student teaching, which is done for credit. I have another friend who was hired as a "full-time adjunct assistant professor" just to supervise student teachers at a private college with a big education program.)</p>

<p>Muhlenberg lab science requirements are pretty minimal. Someone who is not majoring in a science can get away with 2 semesters of science and psychology counts as a science for that purpose. Since psychology lab experiments can be done without much in the way of equipment, that's a very inexpensive way to provide science to students. And it's natural for business/economics majors and education majors to think that psychology is the most useful science for them anyway.</p>

<p>Any Swarthmore student can get research funding and faculty mentoring for just about any worthwhile project they can come up with, according to their website. Research/mentorship opportunities for Muhlenberg students are limited to specially selected honors students.</p>

<p>Swarthmore's library is fabulous and students also have very ready access to libraries at Haverford & Bryn Mawr (requested books are delivered in under 24 hours via a shuttle.)</p>

18

<p>Thanks, Wisteria. I had not realized the huge difference in facitlies and services between the two. It makes more sense.</p>

19

<p>
[quote]
RSI is free to students, but it's not cost free to the hosting institutions, MIT and CEE. The list of sponsors and donors is quite impressive.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Agreed, there are certainly costs to RSI (and Telluride and West Point), even if not borne by the students. </p>

<p>But I was taking issue with mini's point that a free-to-the-student education wouldn't carry as much prestige as a high-sticker-price education.</p>

20

<p>Marite:</p>

<p>For starters, consider that Swarthmore has one full-time professor for every 8.9 students versus one full-time professor for every 13.7 students at Muhlenberg. According to the AAUP faculty salary survey, Swarthmore's average for a full professor is $117,000. Muhlenberg's is $77,000. Figure Swarthmore's benefits package (like full-salary semester sabbatical after every three years teaching) and you are talking some serious differences in faculty costs alone.</p>

<p>Here's the detailed expense breakdown for the two schools, expressed as a per student cost. Your guess is as good as mine as to what specifically is included in each line item:</p>

<p>Swarthmore:</p>

<p>Instruction $23,646
Academic support $8,161
Student services $6,841
Institutional support $14,891
Auxiliary activities $11,884
Research/public service $2,882</p>

<p>Note: It splits up into different categories above, but total Faculty and Staff compensation is $37,635 per student. Faculty compensation is $17,440 per student; staff $20,195 per student. </p>

<p>For example, there are seven Deans, Associate Deans, and Assistant Deans for 1462 students. Every shape, color, and type of Swarthmore student has his or her own specialized dean -- it is a very student-oriented place.</p>

<p>Muhlenberg: </p>

<p>Instruction and research $9,856
Adult education $750
Library $641
Student services $2,685
Plant Operation/maintenance $3,194
General administration $1,569
General institution/other expense $2,252
Depreciation $2,087
Auxiliary enterprises $4,322</p>