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</p>
<p>It's a nice analogy, it just has little basis in fact. Airlines live on revenue from business travelers who book at the last minute and get jammed into the same miserable cattle-car coach seats as everyone else for six times the fare. Trust me on this! Moo.</p>
<p>Washdad:</p>
<p>Well, if business travelers endure the same miserable traveling conditions as coach travelers, they're in the same situation as full fare students who don't get anything extra over full ride students. Which makes the analogy even more apt.</p>
<p>"Well mini lets back up here for a minute. The question is how to construct a system where we better control rapidly rising college costs not how do we make the fairest of all possinble worlds."</p>
<p>I have absolutely no or very little interest in controlling prices at a bunch of prestige schools that could fall off the face of the earth tomorrow with little or no impact on the bulk of American education. The very, very little interest I do have is not even to increase the very small portion of fully qualified low-income students who are able to attend. The only interest I have (if any) is that my measly alumni contributions not be used to subsizidize the millionaires' kids (as they are now), though I take some perverse pleasure in that fact. </p>
<p>As to the bulk - the state schools - the state has a legitimate and compelling interest in ensuring that they don't create a permanent underclass by either pricing out or under-admitting students from low or very low income backgrounds. They have a much smaller, though still legitmate, interest in making sure students from whatever background are challenged enough - and supported enough - to meet the needs of the job market. </p>
<p>Everything is mere dross and rhetoric, or at least it is to me.</p>
<p>marite - some schools actually publish the number and certainly every college president and college board knows what it s for their university. I know from published numbers that the discount rate at Tulane which is a top 50 school and takes less than 50% of applicants had a discount rate of 31% pre-katrina. I doubt it has gone down. </p>
<p>The higher you go on the food chain the lower that rate will be but with a ranking of 44 Tulane is still in pretty rarefied territory vis a vis the other 3500 schools in the country. I would expect to see fairly similar number for quite a few private schools you have heard of but are not at the very tippety top and these are the schools where the vast bulk of our kids go.</p>
<p>The question in my mind is why does Tulane list its price, tuition room and board at $43,000 a year when what it is really charging is closer to $30,00 a year. The answer is because that would leave federal money on the table. If they charged 30K any family with a 30K EFC would be eligible for squat. If they allegedly charge $43 there is a gap to be filled with Stafford loans or whatever other largesse the government is giving out today.</p>
<p>There are other competitive reasons for doing it as well. University of Richmand recently dramatically increased their tuition not so much because they were suffering financially as because they thought people thought less of them because they were not as expensive as other top tier schools.</p>
<p>MINI's socialist heaven where the rich pay for the poor is a pipe dream aimed at a few minorities who can pass the brown paper bag test and have been safely vetted to be allowed around the sons and daughters of the wealthy. That is the cold assessment of this admiitedly gimlet eyed old man. There is no general scheme that will allow it to work on a large scale to benefit the poor. The one thing the rich are best at is keeping their money. The tip to the Pullman porter ain't getting anyone out of the field. All it is doing is making the rich man feel virtuous on the cheap.</p>
<p>More data: U of Michigan, 2004-2005
total undergraduates: 23,773.</p>
<p>Need based aid from fed and state); $10,716,922 + 247,596
Non-need based aid from fed and state: $3,711,960 +8,777,335.</p>
<p>Total need-based aid: $46,184,301.
total non-need based aid (including outside scholarships): $50,620,469.</p>
<p>In-state tuition,room and board and student fee: $17,172
OOS tution, room and board and student fee: $36,044.
Outside scholarships :$12,918,408</p>
<p>I don't know about Tulane but Princeton uses outside monies (federal, state and outside scholarships) to the tune of about $5 millions out of a financial aid pool of $59 millions.
For Bowdoin, the figures were approximately $2 millions out of a pool of $18 millions. Not 50% om eother case. As you argue, the proportion may differ down the selectivity index. And this is where merit aid as opposed to need-based aid may make a difference.
As you can see from the new data I posted, UM spends nearly as much on merit aid as it does on need-based aid (and more if outside scholarships are factored in).</p>
<p>Another tidbit to add to the UM data: UM awarded $10,678,564 in athletic awards.</p>
<p>"the state has a legitimate and compelling interest in ensuring that they don't create a permanent underclassby either pricing out or under-admitting students from low or very low income backgrounds."</p>
<p>Well that is a debatable point. A permanent underclass worked pretty well for the Spartans, but let me grant the point anyway. Having granted your point I reiterate that the subject at hand is how to control rapidly rising college costs not how to allocate college education among the haves and the have nots. If we want more kids better educated we could simply allocate more money to the state schools for the purpose, but that does nothing to control costs or mitigate their rise. </p>
<p>If we don't control the rising costs of higher education then the prospect of either the state or federal government continually allocating monies for higher education at a rate a couple of percentage points higher than the CPI is pretty slim. In other word if we don't find a way to control these costs we are not going to find a way for the government to educate the very people you want to see educated.</p>
<p>Really why does it cost more each year to deliver the same product? Somebody needs to set our university leaders down and grill them on this one. I mean are they getting less good at teaching intro to psychology each year? Have the laws of physics suddenly become even less scrutable? There might be a legitimate reason why it is more difficult to teach English each year. For instance it becomes increasingly inscrtable to me why "scrutable" is not a word if inscrutable is, and why "plain" can be both an adjective and a noun when we already have a perfectly good noun pronounced the same but spelled differently. And why do we have grill and grille?</p>
<p>But the vagueries of English don't justify the ever increasing costs of teaching French. Their spelling makes sense even if their pronunciation does not. The cost of teaching French should not be outpacing the rest of the CPI and neither should the university presidents salary.</p>
<p>Some reasons for ever increasing costs:
1. higher health related costs. More students coming in with existing health issues (both physical and mental); costs related to ADA.
2. higher salaries and benefits associated with aging faculty.This could be reduced by abolishing tenure and hiring younger faculty. Already over 40% of teaching positions are filled with adjuncts.
3. Title IX.
4. Demand for better accommodations: better rooms, better food.
5. More technology. In my days, there was one teacher and a blackboard.
There was one payphone per floor. Nowadays, many classrooms come equipped with equipment for showing powerpoint and videos (including zone free videos); bedrooms now all have phone jacks and internet connections.
6. high tech support staff. </p>
<p>These are only some of the factors leading to increasing costs.</p>
<p>a) The biggest single reason higher ed costs have increased is staff wages and benefits. There's simply no way around it. For example, 57% of Swarthmore's operating budget is staff and faculty expense. Health insurance has risen at more than double the rate of inflation for years -- a huge expense in such a labor intensive endeavor.</p>
<p>b) You can't simply ask why it is more expensive to "teach English". The number of programs is constantly increasing. For example, since I was in school we've seen college's add computer science, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic/Middle Eastern studies, African studies, Latin American studies, Asian studies, Film studies. Simply put, the required offerings are much larger than 40 years ago when white males studied white males in the US and Europe and called it a day. You can argue that colleges don't have to teach Middle Eastern or Chinese studies, I suppose. Or, you could argue that maybe colleges should drop "obsolete" programs like Latin and Greek. </p>
<p>c) Student support services have grown immensely. In the 1960's, it was basically sink or swim....and the low graduation rates at top colleges reflected that. Today you have significant psych counselling services (1700 individual "sessions" at Swat last year), plus much larger dean's staff, advising staffs, etc. You could argue that it would be better to just let students flounder. That would save a lot of money.</p>
<p>d) As marite points out, technology costs are significant...and basically non-existant 40 years ago. Swarthmore spends more than $1000 per student on Information Technology. What do each of you spend each year on your broadband internet connection? Now, add the cost of staff and academic and public computers and maintaining a network for 2500 users. Could colleges go back to the days when student had occasional access to the school's "mainframe"? I suppose.</p>
<p>e) And, finally, let's not forget the cost of free continental breakfast in the dorms:</p>
<p>
[quote]
The brainchild of Mertz and Alice Paul RAs, the idea to provide breakfast for residents affected by the construction was successfully pitched to President Al Bloom at the annual RA dinner. The idea was proposed by Mertz RA Erick Zwick ’07, who shared a table with Bloom that night. According to Zwick, the president and the RAs had been brainstorming ideas to reduce the inconvenience of living next to a construction site. “We suggested having later classes or providing breakfast. [Bloom] was surprisingly receptive to that idea,” Zwick said. </p>
<p>The RA dinner was held on a Wednesday and the food was provided the following Monday.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Re FAFSA:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Experts Plan FAFSA Reform
KSG scholars outline scheme to simplify formula and application form
Published On Monday, April 09, 2007 1:07 AM
By RAVIV MURCIANO-GOROFF
Contributing Writer</p>
<p>Two scholars at the Kennedy School of Government seek to increase the number of low-income students applying to higher education institutions by simplifying the application form and formula for calculating federal financial aid.
[/quote]
[quote]
Associate Professor of Public Policy Susan M. Dynarski ’87 and Judith E. Scott-Clayton, a Kennedy School student, constructed a simplified formula through which federal aid is calculated based on two factors: income and number of dependents.
Their most recent discussion paper, entitled “College Grants on a Postcard: A Proposal for Simple and Predictable Federal Student Aid,” outlines a financial aid form that would fit on a single postcard.
“There is pretty good evidence that some institutional financial aid programs have increased college enrollment rates. However, there is little firm evidence that federal student aid increases college attendance,” Scott-Clayton said. “It seems to us that the simpler systems were getting good results, while the complicated systems weren’t.”
[/quote]
</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Well that is a debatable point. A permanent underclass worked pretty well for the Spartans....<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Yeah, if you call living in constant fear of a revolt by the Helots "working pretty well."</p>
<p>Information technology saves money. It doesn't contribute to the rising costs. Computer registration and billing, online documentation that doesn't have to be photocopies etc etc.</p>
<p>Even the Powerpoint presentations and equipment in the classromm save the Prof from have to draw the same charts, diagrams, equations etc over and over again.</p>
<p>I graduated from college 35 years ago and I don't remember there being a dearth of courses on Africa, Asia, or South America. In fact I vividlt recall a political science course on North Africa where the Prof assigned some reading and said the next class we would talk about Libya and King Idris. The night before the class Gaddafi launched his coup and overthrew Idris. The Prof came in and said he had no idea what was going on or who this guy Gaddafi was and apparently neither did anyone at the State Department.</p>
<p>The costs go up because anything the school decides to spend money on is by definition necessary. That is the way all businesses work when the profit motive is removed. In other words they work just like government. A for profit business would avoid sectors where they could not make money. A college has no such motivation and so you get ersatz Indians teaching native American Studies for $100 grand a year in Colorado.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Information technology saves money. It doesn't contribute to the rising costs.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Really? I could have sworn that I have to write Comcast a check every month for broadband internet access. I'll have to call 'em and let 'em know they've got it backwards!</p>
<p>
[quote]
A for profit business would avoid sectors where they could not make money.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Like advising? Health services? Psych counseling? Dormitories? Science labs? Language instruction? Professors?</p>
<p>Not that many students study ancient languages and some modern languages. I guess they don't make money, so why should they teach them?</p>
<p>^^ tongue-in-cheek, I hope?</p>
<p>At one community college, in the wake of 9/11, enrolments in Arabic shot up from a handful to over 125.</p>
<p>interesteddad I would guess you are feeding your broadband addiction at the expense of other more expensive forms of entertainment. Seen the price of a book or magazine subscription lately? Obviously information technology costs money but it is cheaper and more efficient than the old way of doing things, or it is if I write the software.</p>
<p>For sectors that lose money I had more in mind under-enrolled departments and schools. I also kind of question the need for 26 intercollegiate sports and three recreation centers plus a palace for the univesity president, a university golf course and I even saw a private airfield at Virginia Tech. </p>
<p>Anybody who doesn't think there is a little gilding of the lilly going on at these places needs to pay more attention.</p>
<p>"Not that many students study ancient languages and some modern languages. I guess they don't make money, so why should they teach them?"</p>
<p>No the question is why should so many colleges be teaching them if the demand is not there. Giving the number of universities in a typical large city there is not much reason for them to all have underenrolled Sanskrit courses. In Washington, DC there are six major universities within 6 miles of each other and two more in the immediate suburbs plus a handful of colleges. Not everything really needs to be offered at all of them if the demand is not there.</p>
<p>I'm way more concerned with the golf courses and the over the top fitness centers and the extremely groomed grounds rather than broad and deep course offerings.</p>
<p>State univesity systems especially should try to weed out duplicate under enrolled programs. They should also probably look at distributing their centers of excellence a little more among the regional campuses. Allowing schools to specialize more in certain disciplins.</p>
<p>I know that here in Maryland we are saddled with a bunch of small historically Black schools that nobody wants to kill for obvious political reasons but are duplicative and inefficient. Three of them are within spitting distance of each other too. Governments cannot do things that will cost effect and efficient offend voters but a business can and will.</p>
<p>A good many state university systems do just that, but it depends on the degree to which specific colleges and universities are autonomous.</p>