@PurpleTitan I actually called UW-M after that article was published bc they are one of the 4 Russian critical language flagships. UW would have been a great option for my dd. Their response? That they were misquoted and that they were not going to be increasing merit aid.
Speaking of the northeast and people asking about colleges, one of my pet peeves is folks who within the first 5 minutes of meeting them, despite the fact they are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, name drop their college into the conversation. Really?! Who cares where you went a few decades ago.
What they really would have to cut back on to cut tuition meaningfully, is head count in terms of professors and staff. Salaries and benefits are the biggest piece of the operating budget.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek FYI, UW-M is Milwaukee. Madison is just Madison
@“Snowball City” Thank you for the correction. My posts are referencing Madison, then. 
@Zinhead, this is so true! My daughter followed the money to Alabama, and as far as she’s concerned, she graduated from the finest school in the country. Bookend national championships during your time at a school will have you thinking that.
Is the cost of college skewing life choices? Does college debt delay marriage, car purchases, house buying? Does the thought of prospective college costs limit the number of children one has? If your my age it never did in the past but If it does, there are some serious economic consequences down the pike.
@Sue22 And yet there are plenty of NE UMC parents putting their family’s financial health in peril because of the pressure to be “good parents” and chase that status. Part of asking others about their college may be making connections but part is certainly being a peacock on display. New money trying to be old. Real old NE money is actually famously frugal. And while they have a focus on education they actually more supportive of the practical options than the insecure newer money.
NE is it’s own bubble and that brief point in history when more people actually had access to the Hogwarts LAC has skewed the current climate as parents who lucked out don’t have the means to pay it forward in terms of status and don’t have the fiscal fortitude to choose a practical option. They’ve always given more to their kids than they had and don’t want the appearance of failure at this educational crossroads.
There are already some serious economic consequences in place. With college debt totalling $1.4+ trillion dollars, it is a massive wealth transfer going from upper and middle class families to these “not-for-profit” institutions. This high debt load for an asset that has not changed in value is one of the reasons that the US economy has been so weak in the past decade.
@wisteria100 – “What they really would have to cut back on to cut tuition meaningfully, is head count in terms of professors and staff. Salaries and benefits are the biggest piece of the operating budget.”
Actually, where I have seen real information on the types of US schools being discussed in this thread, faculty costs are <-25%, and that includes all of the professors that are only doing research/teaching grad school and not interacting with students. Sports have long been net costs for almost all schools. Administration sizes and salaries have skyrocketed (plenty of links to data proving this within this and other threads). There is a lot of room to cut outside of professor salaries/benefits …that’s why universities that only teach are so much cheaper. I admit that it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle once you’ve built 3 stadiums, 2 gyms, multiple student life centers, etc. and hired the management, maintenance, cleaning, and services staff to take care of those facilities. But it IS possible.
re:#290:
“@monydad unfortunately yes this particular AP course is typical to take sophomore year at my S high school.”
Hello? Hello? Who is this?
I think you’ve got the wrong number.
Gonna go back to sleep now…
As long as you have sufficient numbers of kids/parents willing to pay the applicable cost of admission (discounted or otherwise) and you are getting sufficient quality of kids enrolling, why would a school change? There is something of an arms race with colleges/universities in terms of dorms, rec centers, libraries, etc. Based on the number of people here and that I know who talk about those things when they come back from tours, seems like its money well spent. I don’t remember the first time I heard the phrase “college experience” and I didn’t know exactly what it meant. But it sounded expensive.
@NashvilletoTexas & @wisteria100:
Good luck trying to sell those who can afford better on the German uni/CUNY experience.
Right now, Americans can already get the German uni/CUNY experience (or University of London International) if they want (German unis are tuition-free for Americans as well) but I don’t see overwhelming demand for them from those who can afford more.
Perhaps not yet in great numbers but interest in affordable schools abroad is growing. A top student from my son’s school went to St. Andrew’s in Scotland last year. McGill is experiencing record applications from the US. The costs of American colleges is out of control. Something has to give.
“And yet, people are not clamoring to enter CUNY’s at well less than half the full-price of a private.
That’s the problem.”
It’s even less than that if you live in NY. Tuition is around $6,500 and there are many merit-based scholarships, a few of which will give you more than tuition to cover most of your other expenses. Just a little plug for CUNY.
But most of them are definitely commuter schools, for the most part.
@PurpleTitan I’ve got college-aged kids…I agree that would be a hard sell, and must admit that I loved my years at a U.S. higher education resort, and have told my daughter all the great experiences that she has to look forward to! Like many others in this thread, I was able to bypass the problem by taking full merit scholarships, so we are fortunate to have our cake and eat it too at the low cost of just sacrificing some bragging prestige. But I know this options isn’t available to everyone. I was just debating the idea that the only place to cut if we wanted to would be professor salaries.
It’s one thing when someone claims that the public options in New England are far inferior to the education their kid is getting at Cal Tech. Whether it is true for the student in question or not- at least this is an argument which is based on some measurable reality. Quality of the student body as measured by scores, grades, interest in/ability to absorb complex intellectual material. Ok- this I get.
It’s when someone is going to claim that U Mass is far inferior to XYZ college (fill in the blanks- a private college which used to be an ok regional school attracting rich kids who couldn’t get into Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore but still wanted that “LAC experience”). There are dozens of these. Through shrewd marketing (and massive price increases) they’ve managed to garner the kind of cachet that the top LAC’s had a generation ago.
This is where the whining becomes sort of hilarious. We had a mother posting a few weeks ago about the massive debt her kid was taking on to go to Hofstra from Texas. Hofstra. Repeated for emphasis. We had a kid a few months ago leveraged to the hilt (his loans, parents loans, still needed to fill the gap) to go to Pace. I won’t repeat for emphasis. We had a parent lamenting that he couldn’t afford Villanova.
These are fine colleges but if there’s anyone out there that believes their academic and intellectual offerings surpass that of U Mass or Binghamton I have a bridge to sell you. Particularly in the sciences. You need to pay top dollar for your kid to study CS at a second or third tier private college because instate at Stony Brook isn’t good enough for you? Ask an actual computer scientist- someone doing research in AI, or attending global conferences on machine learning and hobnobbing with other PhD’s in computer science about your second or third tier college vs. Stony Brook.
And then complain that it’s an arms race?
Actually, administrator numbers.
But the thing is, why would schools cut? Becoming a CUNY (or German uni) isn’t exactly most colleges’ aspiration and people are still willing to pay for a better experience.
Furthermore:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administrators-growth_n_4738584.html:
Universities and university associations blame the increased hiring on such things as government regulations and demands from students and their families—including students who arrive unprepared for college-level work—for such services as remedial education, advising, and mental-health counseling.
“All of those things pile up, and contribute to this increase,” said Dan King, president of the American Association of University Administrators.
“I think there’s legitimate criticism” of the growth in hiring of administrators and other nonacademic employees, said King. “At the same time, you can’t lay all of the responsibility for that on the universities.”
There are “thousands” of regulations governing the distribution of financial aid alone, he said. “And probably every college or university that’s accredited, they’ve got at least one person with a major portion of their time dedicated to that, and in some cases whole office staffs. These aren’t bad things to do, but somebody’s got to do them.”
Since 1987, universities have also started or expanded departments devoted to marketing, diversity, disability, sustainability, security, environmental health, recruiting, technology, and fundraising, and added new majors and graduate and athletics programs, satellite campuses, and conference centers.
Some of these, they say—such as beefed-up fundraising and marketing offices—pay for themselves, and sustainability efforts save money through energy efficiency.
Others “often show up in student referenda, to build or add services,” said George Pernsteiner, president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. “The students vote for them. Students and their families have asked for more, and are paying more to get it.”
I find it very telling and very sad that the OP signed out from this discussion at post #75.
I think they didn’t want to learn anything, but just to complain about how unfair it is. I see so much of this and it makes me very sad about our society and those who have more than most. A generalization for sure but one that is pervasive.
@blossom I literally just had almost this EXACT conversation with my child’s GC. I believe that some of these are simply better schools, regardless of price.