<p>OK, though, IMO, the folks who would benefit most from an elite education (disadvantaged/lower-class/URM/immigrants) usually get good fin aid from the elite privates.</p>
<p>A bright, motivated kid from a upper-middle-class family who was motivated & confident enough to at least apply to elite privates will likely do just as well in state school or a LAC or private just off the top tier that gives substantial merit money even if their family can’t afford full-pay.</p>
<p>@Pizzagirl – not sure about the dorms – the main difference I see is in the services. Personnel costs tend to be the highest cost for most operations, so for every new program or service you add it costs the salary plus benefits of every new employee you need to make it work. And a lot of that is invisible. But I have definitely had the feeling, when touring campuses, that there are a lot more programs and services than there were when I was in college. Someone upthread mentioned that their father works for a university and has seen the administration grow significantly over the years, and complains about how they all sit around doing nothing. We can argue over whether all that new administration staff is necessary or not, but the fact is that it’s very expensive.</p>
<p>For a long time institutions responded to complaints about how they needed to have this service or do that thing for their customers or students with the stock line of “if we did that, we’d have to charge a lot more.” I think maybe colleges and universities realized that they <em>could</em> charge more, and that if they touted their new fancy programs (travel abroad! outdoor adventure program over spring break! guest lecturer series that features some of the biggest names in their fields!) they could attract high-paying students away from other colleges. If your customers can afford to pay higher costs, it becomes very much to your advantage to provide a premium product. Then if your competition starts doing the same thing, it becomes an arms race. </p>
<p>Gotcha. I don’t disagree at all that there are a lot more services, and yes, there are obviously a lot of employees needed to make that happen. </p>
<p>(I wonder how many people a typical university employs to just maintain and run a website - both the technical part and the content part – which obviously wasn’t needed in our day. As big as a research university is, creating and constantly changing a website that incorporates welcome to new students, info for prospective students, info for parents, info for alumni, constantly changing calendar of events, breaking news affecting the school or city, not to mention specific web links to curriculum, strategic plans, a few dozen departments, staff emails and bios, department information, plus if relevant links to the university’s hospital, law program, business school, etc., sports programming – it’s a HUGE undertaking to manage a website of that complexity and there have got to be, oh,I don’t know, dozens and dozens of employees who “touch” some part of it.)</p>
<p>I have no problem paying for services. I just always heard the “oh, the facilities are now so hotel-like” and mention of climbing walls and other gee-gaws and honestly, I never saw any facilities that made me think “boy, was that over the top lavish.”</p>
<p>No, I don’t think there’s any over the top luxurious stuff, but honestly, just stuff like providing a full-service mental health clinic rather than just a part-time counselor for students will raise costs, and that doesn’t look like luxury.</p>
<p>edit: okay, I think a lazy river qualifies as luxury! Was there a waterfall and a rope swing too?</p>
<p>That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. A lazy river? Where? Disneyworld? I’ve simply not seen anything as lavish or obviously-discretionary on any college campus.</p>
<p>These are just a few things I found. Idk if you would consider it lavish though. I think having puppies available to play with during finals week is pretty lavish!</p>
<p>I have one daughter starting at a state school, traditional cinder block dorms, double, bathroom down the hall. Not many other options offered to freshmen, but there are some suite style dorms for sophomores and up. She does get a choice of meal plans and picked the lowest, which is still pricy for 12 meals a week. Total is about $8500/yr.</p>
<p>Other daughter is going to a private school, with a big ‘freshman village’. She’ll live in a suite style apartment with a room for each student, a shared bathroom (for 4), a living room and a kitchenette, but freshmen still have to have a full meal plan. Her cost? $13,500! She did have an option of a traditional dorm with a bath down the hall for $2000 less per year, but there aren’t many of those rooms and most of the freshmen live in the village, so that’s where she wanted to live.</p>
<p>At first daughter’s school, they are building a new $40M theater, a new gym, and several new high tech classroom buildings. At second daughter’s school, they already have a new athletic facility, unbelievable pool, and a ‘dining experience.’ My nephew started yesterday and lives in a new dorm with an adviser who lives in, and she has a dog. His school just got a new pool that everyone is talking about. It’s had climbing walls for decades - that’s old school!</p>
<p>Annie, those puppies are almost always there for free. At every U I’ve ever heard of, they are puppies available for adoption at local shelters. It’s not like they’re buying puppies for a week. </p>
<p>“At Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL. You get a free cruise for a week for orientation which goes to the Caribbean. Two Olympic size pools. A mile from the beach. Campus looks like a country club. In the handbook, “no more than 48 beers allowed in your fridge” lol. Movies on the lawn. Free concerts too. We had the final presidential debate held at our school (sadly, Obama was there). So much more but I think that the cruise is an amazing start!”</p>
<p>OK, a week-long Caribbean cruise kind of takes the cake.</p>
<p>“In 2003-2004, Donald E. Ross was once paid a salary over $5,000,000 according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, making him at the time the highest paid college president. As noted in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Lynn University retained the national accounting firm, KPMG, to determine an equitable retirement compensation package for Dr. Ross considering his performance and 35-year term of service (most of which was spent without significant retirement benefits). This was a third of the endowment and seemed extremely high for such a small college.”</p>
<p>A web site can actually save some costs while delivering better services. For example, distributing course and scheduling updates by web is much more efficient for both the school and student than using paper catalogs, schedules, and handouts.</p>
<p>Nothing, unless people stop paying that amount. Given that the elite schools have about half of their undergraduates willingly paying list price (implying a willingness to pay that or more), there is potential revenue that they are leaving on the table – they could raise both the list prices and their financial aid so that the current financial aid recipients pay the same, but the current list price students pay more.</p>
<p>Wow, some of those college perks remind me of how the Google campus works – free food, sports/rec facilities, the ability to do all your annoying errands right there on campus (dry cleaning, banking, getting a haircut, etc.). Is this the wave of the future, at least for the privileged few?</p>
<p>@dustypig: for Google, it’s a smart economic decision. They likely get more/better output from their employees that way. For the colleges, well, it’s also smart because students who are willing to pay are attracted to them. I wouldn’t say that they make the student output better, however.</p>
<p>AnnieBeats, I cannot figure out why you would think that having puppies to per during finals week would be a “luxury perk.” That’s probably close to free. </p>
<p>When they bring in puppies or kittens they do it through shelters who provide information on how to volunteer/foster/adopt.</p>
<p>@skrlvr, I was talking about PhD programs, not grad programs in general. The most prestigious ones are fully funded, even providing stipends (although lower) in fields like history and anthropology. Harvard’s stipend in physics is around $33,000 per year. Cornell’s is ~$26,000, Stanford ~$37,000 (it varies with the cost of living). The stipend for anthropology at Penn I think is around $23,000. Not as high, but you are not paying tuition which is like $40,000.</p>
<p>I think that we might be beginning to see the “tipping point”. Sarah Lawrence did not fill their class this year and they are (according to Forbes and others) the most expensive college in the country. My S is at the University of Delaware and they had an unexpected 400 out of state students enroll giving them the large freshman class in history. I think that little by little people are starting to vote with their feet. </p>