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<p>And I agree with you, Beliavsky. Happy Friday!</p>
<p>“I can see that with elite colleges. Why is every private college charging the same whether they are ranked 10, 20, or 70.”</p>
<p>They’re not. They post a comparable price because they want to look like a comparable institution, but thread-after-thread on merit aid here should convince you that those rates are about as meaningful as the rack rates posted on the inside of your hotel room door.</p>
<p>Well, the rankings aren’t that meaningful either, and certainly not being used the baseline for colleges setting tuition.</p>
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<p>How can Ferrari justify pricing their cars the way they do? How can Neiman-Marcus justify selling handbags for thousands of dollars? It’s not “wrong.” It’s the free market. If tomorrow Harvard decided to end all financial aid and charge $200,000/tuition, well, that’s their prerogative. If it damaged the Harvard brand name, well, then so be it. </p>
<p>It’s only a problem if one thinks that these universities offer things that can’t be generally gotten elsewhere. It’s only a problem that Ferrari makes super-expensive cars if there aren’t other modes of transportation available. It’s only a problem that Neiman’s sells expensive handbags if there aren’t other handbags available. But those things aren’t true. Harvard doesn’t owe anything to anybody other than its own institution.</p>
<p>In theory they then become less elite (at least by the smallest proportions)</p>
<p>two-thirds of high school graduates go straight to college? that seems a little high…</p>
<p>An elite college diploma is considered a Veblen good.</p>
<p>[Veblen</a> good - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good]Veblen”>Veblen good - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>It’s unlikely these elite colleges will expand their class sizes for this reason. This means that CC’s and state colleges will have to absorb the growing number of college-bound students.</p>
<p>Some of this is nonsense on stilts. What are the elite colleges, the top 10 or the top 100. If they are private colleges, they all charge about the same. Some will meet full FA need and some will provide merit scholarships, but they all don’t cost the same. And I would bet that for the average student, the actual cost to attend the top 10 schools is less than whatever school is hovering around the 100 mark. You didn’t get into HYP, so stop whining about how many students the school accepts (or better yet just pretend that there is no difference between HYP and all the rest of the colleges in the country).</p>
<p>It’s not all about students…</p>
<p>If a school adds students, it has to add faculty unless it is willing to let the quality of the education offered deteriorate. It also has to add other personnel–in admissions, in career services, in campus health facilities, etc. </p>
<p>It also has to add facilities–not just dorms, but classrooms, labs, performing spaces, rehearsal spaces, computer services, etc. </p>
<p>It’s really not that easy.</p>
<p>A lot of these schools are constrained by other factors, for instance town-gown relations and limited space. Georgetown for instance, desperately wants to increase the number of undergrads but the neighborhood hates the university so they forced an enrollment cap and want 90% of Gtown students housed on campus by 2016, which basically will prevent any expansion of Gtown. I believe universities in the Chicago area also have had the same issues; Evanston I’m almost certain has a rule stating 3 unmarried people living in the same building is a brothel, which also prevents any student expansion</p>
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<p>Around 2/3 of high school graduates nowadays start college. However, most don’t finish with a 4-year bachelors degree at the end. Major reasons are insufficient finances and/or academic issues.</p>
<p>More undergrads means not only more dorm/residential college space (if campus space was avaialable to build it) but also more classroom space, dining hall space, faculty and office space, housekeeping and other support staff, may need a bigger bookstore, you name it. This is a BIG commitment, and schools may understandibly not want to change the size/feel of what makes their school what it is. Rice increased its undergraad population by about 30% over the past decade. Met with a lot of resistence by past and (at the time) present students, and changed the feel of the school somewhat, even going from just 2900 to about 3700 undergrads</p>
<p>Here is the info that was presented to explain the decision to increase the undergrad population by 30%. I recommend you download the powerpoint presentation [Size</a> : Rice University](<a href=“Rice University”>Rice University) and look at the graph on pg 3. It shows the growth of several top colleges/universities. Looks like several grew a lot between the 1960’s-80’s but the growth curve has essentially flattened since then.</p>
<p>By the way, many students were not happy with the shift in size at Rice, and felt that they were less focused on the undegrad education [An</a> open letter to President Leebron and the Board of Trustees on the future of Rice - Opinion - The Rice Thresher - Rice University](<a href=“http://www.ricethresher.org/opinion/an-open-letter-to-president-leebron-and-the-board-of-trustees-on-the-future-of-rice-1.2874009#.UTH88zDVvqI]An”>http://www.ricethresher.org/opinion/an-open-letter-to-president-leebron-and-the-board-of-trustees-on-the-future-of-rice-1.2874009#.UTH88zDVvqI)</p>
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<p>Is a Bentley or a designer dress considered a social good? Are they routinely discounted to make them available to the most deserving drivers or wearers in the expectation that society later will benefit? Did the Ivies loose cachet when they began admitting women or increasing low-income student enrollments ~40 years ago? Are Deep Springs College, Cooper Union, or Olin less prestigious because they are free or heavily discounted for all students? </p>
<p>I think it is no coincidence that none of the top 20 national universities (and of course none of the top LACs) have arts & science enrollments of over 10K undergraduates. Do they conspire to keep enrollments low just to maintain prestige and high sticker prices? If Harvard made attendance free to all students would it suddenly become less prestigious? Is Amherst more prestigious than the Ivies because it’s smaller? No; if anything, the opposite is true. </p>
<p>I don’t see how these schools could continue to offer quite the same academic and social atmosphere if they doubled or tripled in size. Universities with 25K students may be surrounded by cool college towns; they may offer D1 sports extravaganzas as well as world-class research environments. Could they be equally fertile ground for phenomena like Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Club, Yale’s Wiffenpoofs, Chicago’s annual Scav Hunt, or Penn’s Kelly Writers House? If some of them already are - others please chime in! </p>
<p>The first problem would be filling a 5000-student freshman class with straight-A, high-scoring students from all over the country (including kids from North Dakota who play beautifully on under-represented musical instruments while winning national science prizes and fighting poverty) yet maintain a reasonable balance of science, social science, and humanities majors. The next problem would be housing and feeding them in settings designed to encourage lingering conversation and idea-sharing. How do you do that on a big sprawling campus with 1000-resident dorms and mile-wide separations between classes? (Again, if some very large universities already foster that kind of undergraduate atmosphere, please tell.)</p>
<p>I think that is the purpose of honors programs where like-minded students live and study together. And even huge universities have traditions and clubs such as those you mention. And what about class size? A lot of classes at the universities you hold up as exemplary are just as large as those in big state schools. </p>
<p>I appreciate your point, but think your distinctions on size are sort of arbitrary.</p>
<p>The question isn’t really whether a small-/mid-sized, highly ranked school can have large classes. The question is whether a school that is now smaller and highly ranked can become much larger, yet still preserve the same qualities that the college rankings reward (including a high percentage of small classes, if it wants to preserve that). I’m not aware of a single large university (> 10K undergraduate arts & science students) where less than 10% of classes have 50 or more students and more than 2/3 have fewer than 20. There is no such university that consistently maintains LAC-like class sizes. Only a few small-/mid-sized universities (Chicago, Tufts, Brandeis) come very close. Still, in general, the numbers at highly ranked, mid-sized universities are a lot better than the numbers at big public universities. Granted, that’s one of the features the rankings reward.
(<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/708190-avg-class-size.html</a>)</p>
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<p>Exactly. Harvard tripled in size wouldn’t be Harvard anymore except in name only. If some kid says he wants to go to Princeton, and he wishes it would get a lot bigger so he’d stand a better chance getting in, if his wish were fulfilled he wouldn’t get the Princeton he’s hoping for. It might be called Princeton, but it in terms of his actual experience it would be the functional equivalent of New Jersey State Univ. at Princeton.</p>
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<p>Georgetown may have the misfortune to be located in the midst of an affluent neighborhood that has political clout. Many elite universities–either by design (for the the conspiratorial minded) or accident–have the good fortune (from their point of view) to be located in or near neighborhoods that have low property value and weak political power. </p>
<p>Yale, for example, when you head north, is contiguous to the most affluent neighborhood in New Haven. But when you head south, you enter one of New Haven’s poorest neighborhoods. Guess where Yale New Haven Hospital (technically not Yale University but in a mind meld with the med school) built its new cancer center? Not in the leafy green nabe of 3k square foot professor homes, but in the poor neighborhood of low income and high unemployment. It was cheaper to build there, and the opposition was easier to overcome with promises of jobs and community development. “You’ll learn to love that 14-story hulk casting blocking the sunshine on your street.”</p>
<p>Chicago, Harvard, and Columbia are three other elites that are pockets of affluence hard by “bad” neighborhoods allowing smoother and more politically and economically viable expansion. It can’t be all an accident–although sometimes it’s less than peaceful. Back in the 60s, the major student demo-riots at Columbia were triggered in part by the plan to build a student gym on public parkland in Harlem. The gym–to built built on a hill leading up from Harlem to Morningside Heights would have had community residents entering their sop–a separate but unequal facility at the bottom of the hill, while the Columbia men would enter their luxe facility at the top of the hill. They called it “Gym Crow,” and the plans were in the context of Columbia having separately evicted 7,000 residents from university owned housing–85 percent of whom were minorities. It all was an example of contiguous poor neighborhoods make it easier to expand. It never happened. Watch the “Strawberry Statement.”</p>
<p>Although it has taken some time for Columbia to regain the stature it lost after rioting and tear gas all over the campus, what has it learned? It’s planning to push out property owners–having won in the courts–and move north into a new 17-acre campus in the Manhattanville neighborhood. An alternative plan to move into the Lincoln Center neighborhood was a much heavier lift, and abandoned.</p>
<p>Universities may be ivory towers, but within those tower live land barons. </p>
<p>[The</a> Columbia Current](<a href=“http://www.columbia.edu/cu/current/articles/spring2008/eminent-domain.html]The”>http://www.columbia.edu/cu/current/articles/spring2008/eminent-domain.html)</p>
<p>[Manhattanville</a> campus - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia](<a href=“http://www.wikicu.com/Manhattanville_campus]Manhattanville”>Manhattanville campus - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia)</p>
<p>Arizona State has expanded . . . Go Devils!</p>
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<p>I’m curious, what “bad” neighborhood is “hard by” the Harvard campus. How can I buy presumably cheap property there. And if you think expansion by Harvard anywhere in Cambridge is politically viable, you haven’t been paying attention.</p>
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Post 35 by efreens.</p>
<p>You’re trying to address way too many things here and you’re muddled. Admit rates are due to the ballooning of applications. If next year, HYPMS saw apps drop by 50%, their admit rates would double. It’s not their fault that kids all over the globe (think Common App) are foolish enough to toss in a prayer-application. </p>
<p>Or do you think that just because more apps come in, that it is imperative to the college directors to spend billions to expand and perhaps water down the experience for the existing students? </p>
<p>It’s not like they are a hospital ER fulfilling some community need. Those who don’t get in end up elsewhere.</p>
<p>And how are colleges with BILLIONS in endowment supposed to run? Hurry up and spend down their wealth to get under a BILLION to escape your wrath? Don’t we want other institutions to mimick their successful wealth management? This is a head shaker. Or perhaps you’re implying that due to their enormity of wealth, they need to be larger contributors to the common well-being – like providing community outreach, hospitals, legions of volunteers, educating people, providing employment, providing cultural offerings? What’s your suggestion besides the OP’s tenet that they open more beds and wrestle away more top faculty from 2nd tier schools?</p>