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Add all the "top quintile" kids together and they amount to 75% of the student population
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<p>And, you don't think that more than 75% of the student population at Williams in 1970 had family incomes of more than $15,531 per year?</p>
<p>Heck, 75% of the students when I was there came from Westchester County or Short Hills.</p>
<p>In 1980, I'm SURE that 75% of the student population didn't have the equivalent of $92k incomes and above. In 1970, I'd have to be more equivocal. (Atypical sample, as, during more four years, I lived with 7 different students, 6 of whom were on financial aid. But, I also lived next to the hockey playing/acid dropping "military/industrial complex"). Some of this would simply have been the impact in 1980 of the downward application number trends.</p>
<p>But, remember, that even in 1970, I would have been just a little bit above the Pell Grant equivalence, and received no scholarship aid (a situation that today would never happen - anywhere.) And the situation was virtually the same (although there were more of them) for my friends at Swarthmore.</p>
<p>DoneMom's post #33 has a ring of truth in it for me: ED is particularly useful for the reachy-match student.</p>
<p>Calmom and Mini: The culprit is college costs for 15 years have exceeded the inflation rate. This is more bad management than growing elitism. The price of microwaves, Big Macs and Levi's have fared far better (good management in competitive fields).</p>
<p>Couple that with the elite colleges being swamped with applications, colleges have raised the bar. My kid's (first year) science program at an elite school assumes you have covered multivariable calculus in high school! There are only 25,000 kids with 5s on the BC calculus exam who marginally may be qualified. I imagine that number of 'qualified' applicants gets real small when you demand that the applicant also has an 800 SAT writing score and to be an All State athlete. How do you reconcile the bar raising with the need to economically diversify? Very tough when many public schools high schools don't offer calculus or only one section.</p>
<p>I don't know that "bad management" is a fair analysis. The cost of microwave ovens has gone down for two reasons. First, they are cheap pieces of junk compared to the quality of the older, more expensive versions. Don't believe me? Hoist a VCR on the shelves today next to the early Sony Beta HiFi or JVC VHS HiFi machines. One ways 15 ounces, one weighs 15 pounds. Second, the key labor component has been exported to countries with extremely low standards of living and non-existent environmental protection. </p>
<p>It is difficult to export the labor and benefits costs at a US college to China. In a way, a better analogy for college costs would be the old mainstream airlines whose costs are high, in part, because they pay their employees too well. Upstart airlines, not saddled by existing union contracts, can hire "adjunct" pilots with much lower benefits and salary. Of course, the quality of a college's teaching staff is (or at least should be) a primary determining factor in its quality. Can you drive efficiency of production up? Sure, just double the class sizes and use more TAs.</p>
<p>Sorry, I am not buying. My 2005 DVD player ($200) or DVR is a lot cheaper and more functional than my first $1,200 boat anchor VHS (which I was astounded at in 1979). China changes the subject. Better example is to take the Golden Arches $.15 hamburger in 1955 (first restaurant, today 30,000). Today's price is sold under .15 in 1955 dollars. No Chinese buns or meat in this product. And a lot of lawyers, ad agencies and medical costs in the 2005 version that weren't there in the 1955 version. The private sector's mantra has been 'faster, cheaper and better'. The Board and CEO are booted if they don't make it happen. Tell me what the mantra of a faculty senate or a university's board is? Do they even see economics as an issue? With increasing applications, the customer must be perfectly happy</p>
<p>Universitites and health care seem to be the only parts of our economy where technology has added to costs and not reduced costs. How can the private sector do more with less ( by using CAD/CAE/CAM, enterprise software, sophisticated logistics, the web) while the universities keep coming back for over inflation tuition increases.</p>
<p>In sum, I don't think the governance model of higher education would allow the paradigm shift the private sector has (in some cases painfully) gone through.</p>
<p>Hey, I like $69 VCRs as much as the next guy. Buy 'em, use 'em, throw 'em away. Like a Bic pen. But, the price has been achieved, to a large degree, by engineering the content out of the product.</p>
<p>I think your McDonald's analogy is apt, however. If you go for the most efficient, low-cost production, you will end up with universities that offer a similarly low-grade product. Have you actully eaten a Big Mac? It is a truly wretched product.</p>
<p>There are plenty of low-cost university options for the consumer to choose. They offer a very different product with large class sizes, TA instructors, madning administrative red tape for students, and an assembly-line approach to higher education. At the end of the day, the only way to really engineer value out of an educational product is to drastically reduce the size and cost of the faculty and staff.</p>
<p>"Truly wretched"...45 million people a day in 100 countries around the world apparently don't share your opinion. </p>
<p>I heard the integrated steel companies and the auto industry make almost the identical remarks about 'our industry is unique, there is no way to make quality products any other way.' They have or are in the process of eating their words. Read Innovator's Dilemna. Most industries get hammered by low cost/low quality intruders everyone discounts and eventually the intruder grows up to eat the high cost/high quality guy.</p>
<p>Who knows...maybe education someday.</p>
<p>wsox - I'm not an economist, but I'd suggest the increase in college costs is in major part pushed by demand - which is fueled in no small measure by government "solutions" to the tuition problem. In other words, subsidized loan programs, grant programs, etc. are touted by the solons as tuition relief for the "middle class" and down. All it really does is provide a false sense of purchasing power which drives demand and increased demand pushes prices up as we learned in econ 101. That is not to say that better management couldn't hold down prices, only that the U's have little incentive to do so so long as government fills the trough. The public thinks the government programs are helping, when in fact they are a major source of the cost increases in excess of inflation. Or so it seems to me.</p>
<p>To some extent the automakers are correct. For example, Western European and US automakers are not permitted to operate assembly plants without regard to environmental issues. Likewise, their employees expect a higher wage and benefits. Thus, there is nothing that a US automaker could do to truly match the costs of production in, for example, China. The pollution in most of the developing manufacturing countries will literally take your breath away.</p>
<p>Over the long haul, developing economies eventually must add the costs of environmental controls and higher standards of living to their products as well. For example, Japan is a now an incredibly high-cost-of-production economy. No amount of efficiency has kept manufacturing jobs in Japan; they've gone to southeast Asia just as quickly as US jobs. High cost of production economies must focus on value-added high-end manufacturing. For example, the first generation of cutting edge consumer electronics is manufactured in Japan when high prices warrant. As the product moves down in price with increased production, manufacturing moves to China. Likewise with the Japanese steel industry, which focuses on high-end specialty products.</p>
<p>Notice that your example of McDonald's actually speaks to the strength of the US and its educational system. Where else would marketers have the creativity to develop a brand image sufficiently strong to pass off something that tastes like dog-food as a desireable product around the globe?</p>
<p>"This is more bad management than growing elitism."</p>
<p>Oh, I don't think it is either. I think the prestige colleges and universities manage their stores pretty well, and deliver a product/service both of a quality and a price that is appreciated by their full-pay customers. So well appreciated, in fact, that as they raise the price, the demand for the product/service rises as well. This would indicate a clear underpricing, and these colleges are working slowly to correct this. </p>
<p>I don't think they "chose" to be more elitist either, even if that is the effect. Rather, it costs quite a bit to deliver the competitive product/services expected by their full-fare customers. Their first obligation is to deliver a quality educational product (well, okay, there is Amherst, where its articles of incorporation call for educating "indigent youth of good character"). The prestige of a college over the long-run is directly related to its attractiveness to full-fare customers (or we would see a lot more Bereas); costs to the customer are clearly secondary issues. While these colleges may be more "elite" in their customer base, they haven't had much trouble attracting full-paying members to them, and have dealt with the rest of the pool either by denying them admission (can't complain about financial aid if you don't get in) or (and at the same time) subsidizing attendance for the deserving few.</p>
<p>It's hard for me to imagine how, if I were in their shoes, I would run it differently (except that I'd likely raise list prices more rapidly, and more heavily subsidize those who would otherwise be priced out - but that's a matter of pace, not direction.) I'm actually quite impressed by the way these schools manage what are, after all, enormous resources, and the competing demands of admissions, financial aid, and educational quality.</p>
<p>The fact that today I likely couldn't get into my alma mater (given who I was then and where I came from, and current admissions trends) is not particularly relevant. I would have no more "right" to a prestige college education than I do to a Mercedes, and such colleges are under no social obligation to give me one (the fact that the quality of their educational product might be adversely affected by lower economic diversity is an entirely differnet issue.) I do require a car, and a college degree, and can't manage my life effectively without either, but the same cannot be said about a Mercedes or a degree from (name your school of choice....)</p>
<p>I bought a Panasonic VCR back in 1983 with my first paycheck. It took just about my entire check, as it cost $1,100. It was a great machine. Displayed when it was recording, fast forwarding or rewinding. Displayed the time of day. You could program it without using the television screen. We kept it as long as we could; it even survived the insertion of an audio tape by a two-year old. Finally parts weren't available, and we had to put it aside. The two units we've had since, both made by Sony, have been difficult to use, unreliable junk.</p>
<p>ID - Go buy a GM Hybrid...gotcha. But, you can buy a Toyota or Honda hyubrid made in the USA. I think it is union propaganda that US manufacturers are in trouble solely because of China's environmental, safety, work age issues. Sorry, China alone or even principally didn't make big steel or big 3 auto have fits. Those industries didn't abide to FASTER, BETTER and CHEAPER like they should have. Enjoy a $4 Starbucks while I enjoy an $.85 coffee at McD...no east coast panache!</p>
<p>wsox:</p>
<p>Don't be so hard on the US industrial base. GM and Ford aren't the only automakers bleeding red ink. Nissan has been on its deathbed in recent years.</p>
<p>Meanwhile American companies like Microsoft and Google seem to be doing just fine, thank you very much.</p>
<p>No high-standard-of-living country can compete in the low-price commodity segment of the world economy. That's just the way it is. However, the fully-developed economies, with superb higher education systems can compete quite effectively in the innovation, value-added, premium end of the market. For example, look what Apple has done with the iPod, marketing it as a status/fashion accessory. Or for that matter, look what Starbucks has done for branding coffee.</p>
<p>OK I am a little carried away. BTW there are many US success stories, even a few in manufacturing ( Intel and CAT). But I would agree low end manufacturing is not where you want to be.</p>
<p>I am also excited that a team with a $75 MM payroll could knock off teams in its league with $125MM and $200 MM payrolls and win the world series. Now, that is faster, cheaper and better!</p>
<p>Oh but the topic is early action programs on the upswing.</p>
<p>Just one more piece of the puzzle. Posters on the U Chicago board report that the school had about 2800 applicants compared to last year's 2432. This represents an increase of %16. </p>
<p>They expect to accept a third, defer a third, and reject a third. This represents a drop from last year's 42% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Well, I can't gag down a mc burger to save my soul. My dogs like them, however. </p>
<p>I think that some of the rising costs in education are attributable to physical plant upgrades. Consumers - that's us - tend to judge Uni's at least in part on what they look like. Ghery's don't come cheap!</p>