@furrydog, how are you sure that that prof’s salary and benefits exceed $300K?
What subject is this?
I seriously doubt it will ever BURST- as in price decreasing, but I would reasonably expect prices to stabilize and stop increasing at such a high rate in the future.
What I think might start to happen is that, in recognition of the high cost of attendance at 4-year colleges, entry-level positions will start to accept people with only AA degrees. In response to this, more and more people will start to go the community college route – maybe we’ll even get back to the days when a high school degree was enough for a job that didn’t require an advanced level of learning. That will deflate the cost of attendance at 4-year colleges – though I think it’s more likely that COA will become tied to the prestigiosity of a college. In other words, Harvard will still be $60K a year (likely more by then, though of course they’ll still offer FA to needy students with high stats), but Santa Clara University will be half that.
Or not. Who knows. But I do agree that the current situation is unsustainable.
Students right now are paying for college with money that doesn’t yet exist. What I mean by that is that it’s been loaned to them not based on existing collateral, but on the expectation that they will later earn enough to be able to pay the loans back. so the actual value that ought to be behind the money doesn’t yet exist. Colleges are expanding and building new facilities and so on, all on the assumption that this money is real and that more is coming. At some point it will become obvious to everyone that that money is NOT coming and that all that most of those (former) students can hope to do is keep current on the interest of those loans. I don’t even know what happens then – whether the college bubble in fact bursts, or whether there’s a gentle deflation, or whether the government props everything up and we just keep on going. I hope my above scenario comes to pass because I think that will be the least painful way off this roller coaster for everyone.
@dustypig, online degrees becoming acceptable are much more likely than CC’s and less education being considered acceptable. In fact, I believe hybrid degrees (partially online and partially residential) will become far more common.
I’ve been around academia for a long time. I’ve never heard of a professor who teaches one class per year, unless most of their salary was being paid out of a separate research budget. Not to say it couldn’t happen, but it’s certainly not the norm. And in many schools a class with only 4 registered students would be canceled for insufficient enrollment and the professor would be required to teach something else that drew more students.
Particulars aside, however, you do have a point. US News rewards schools for having low student/faculty ratios, and many prospective students and their parents use s/f ratio as one indicator of educational excellence, among others… That, among other factors in the US News formula, rewards schools for having a high cost-per-student educational model. And that tends to drive up costs as schools jockey for position in the US News rankings, which they all do, though they may not admit it publicly. If someone came up with a credible alternative ranking that rewarded efficiency in educational outcomes rather than simply the highest cost inputs, that might burst the US News bubble and set colleges on a more economical and efficient course.
What I see happening in CA is more and more emphasis on the community college system. More will offer four year degrees and it will become more the norm either doing 2 CC + 2 UC/CS or 4CC.
Well it is true to some extent that you get what you pay for. The increased course offerings and smaller class sizes of a more expensive school does have educational benefit. Whether or not the cost/benefit analysis is in favor of those larger schools is of course questionable, but small classes are generally better for learning than large lecture classes.
I am sure the prof does more than teaching one class a year - I was being hyperbolical. :o)
I do think $300K salary + benefits is within the ball park estimate (OK - may be $220k-$250k).
I am sure that the professor has a Ph D with many years of experience. The school is in a high-income state.
I would think a tenured professor like that should be making $150K+ - no?
You add in health care, vacation, sabbatical, pension contribution/matching, etc, - that should be another $100K?
No, the class was not canceled. It is a required upper division class (language) needed for her to be on the 4-year graduation track. I guess that is the blessing (or curse) of attending some small Podunk LAC and majoring in some obscure field. L-)
Williams, a small very well endowed LAC, teaches elective courses with that few students. Of course, it is also an example of a school that supposedly spends $90,000 per student per year (so that list price is still subsidized by endowment earnings).
I think as more people are squeezed out of being able to pay for a traditional undergrad experience without taking on enormous debt, there’s an opportunity for schools to reach out to them by offering fully accredited online-based education.
(I know, not a new idea… yet you don’t see any really top-notch schools offering them)
This would be low-cost, easy money for schools to make, and a lower-priced option for kids and their families:
- Cameras are placed in lecture and discussion halls.
- Kids log in to gain access to the cameras and tune in to watch lectures in real time. That way, they still have to be "present" just as the regular students are.
- ...this means they, through the use of conference call or WebEx mechanisms, can chime in to ask or answer questions.
- Discussions could be run the same way as lectures.
- Exams are done in real time. Maybe the online exams would be a bit harder, for obvious reasons. I'm not sure what program(s) would be used, but I know it could be done.
- Assignments could be turned in using email.
- Team presentations -- use WebEx. Team members can hand off control of the presentation to one another without having to be in the same place.
- The hard part is, how do you facilitate lab work? Maybe students would have to attend those in person. So, some fee is added if you are taking a class with a lab, and obviously you have to be present. Or schools figure out a way to make lab work possible outside the lab...
Anyway, the universities might charge just tuition plus fees and books. Maybe even a discount on tuition - let the schools compete on price. I just see a huge demand for top-quality education, but many are unable to afford it. Colleges could tap into some of that unmet demand, for the cost of some cameras and other tech, much of which they already likely have… some extra time of profs answering questions, whether handled during class or after… and associated administrative costs of handling the additional applications and other admin work.
The kid pays about half the standard price, so is in (theoretically) half the standard debt.
Obviously schools will not want to take anything away from their core academic cash flow, which is brick-and-mortar education; after working out the expected kinks, the quality of that should remain strong. But this opens up a new cash flow source for them at relatively low cost (and likely great ROI), while providing a great opportunity for those who might not otherwise have been able to afford it.
Just a thought. 
University of North Dakota has distance learning engineering majors. Students complete lab requirements during short visits to the campus during the summer.
http://und.edu/academics/extended-learning/online-distance/degrees/electrical-engineering/how-online-degrees-work.cfm
However, the distance learning engineering program has higher tuition than on-campus attendance. Other distance learning courses are charged at in-state rates for all students.
http://und.edu/academics/extended-learning/online-distance/degrees/electrical-engineering/tuition.cfm
https://und.edu/admissions/student-account-services/tuition-rates.cfm
@furrydog, I think your estimate of salary is too high for a language teacher. Same for your estimate of benefits.
I would wage total costs would be more around $150K-200K for someone teaching 4-6 classes.
The number of administrators in higher ed have exploded, however.
@Trisherella - <<<overpaying for="" a="" college="" education="" (with="" respect="" to="" family’s="" finances)="" doesn’t="" make="" sense,="" whether="" there’s="" bubble="" or="" not.="">>> How right you are.
I’m no expert, but I think parallels can be drawn between the housing market/bubble of the 2000’s and the college market. The housing market was fueled by a Government sponsored societal dream that “everyone should own a home” – the bigger, the better. I think it’s fair to say that there is a similar sentiment today that “everyone should go to college” – the more elite, the better. As more people buy into the dream, the price of homes (education) rises and easy money is made available for people to buy the dream. Since real household incomes don’t keep up with the rising cost of the dream, people take on debt. When the cost of the dream begins to drastically exceed the actual intrinsic value of what’s been purchased, you are in a bubble. Why should education be immune to this phenomenon?
@nhparent9: you wrote that the laws of supply and demand are in play and that 37,000 people are trying to get into a school that will only accept 3600. But think about the bidding wars that took place for desirable homes at the top of the housing market. Once the mortgage default chain reaction began and money got much tighter, those bidders went away. The 37,000 is a measure of how badly people want the dream, not how many can actually afford it.
Who are the victims should the college bubble burst? And how does this impact the economy overall?
I know a number of professors and college administrators socially, and I’m confident they would find income in the real world should their employers go bust. There would be an initial glut of highly educated workers, of course. However, the economy absorbed (some may say barely survived) significant rounds of white collar layoffs in the 90s. I can’t imagine that this would be worse.
The main people to suffer would be the employees of colleges – not just the professors and administrators who have impressive resumes and could find work elsewhere, but all the other employees. Dining hall workers, cleaning staff, low-level admins, etc. Also any local businesses who depend on their contracts with colleges for a significant part of their revenue every year.
But, nobody can predict how bad the repercussions would be since we don’t know what form the bubble-bursting would take. Just remember that any time an artificially inflated economic sector deflates, there are people who were counting on revenue from that sector who won’t be getting it, and that does have repercussions.
Um, no.
Maybe—maybe!—for a business professor. If it’s a med school professor, then sure. (The entire time I was in grad school at Penn, the highest paid employee of the school wasn’t the university president, but rather a world-renowned professor of urology.) But in general? No. Not even a chance. And any percentages I’ve seen for benefits for faculty are way below 60–70%, too.
For a better estimate of faculty salaries and such, see the Chronicle of Higher Education’s database of 2013–2014 faculty salaries (the most recent available) at http://data.chronicle.com/faculty-salaries/ (which I don’t think is behind their paywall—let me know if I’m wrong). Of course, you have to read it with caution—schools with med schools, for example, will have really high numbers because med school faculty make a lot of money (see above), and similarly business and law school faculty at top-end business and law schools. Once you mentally adjust for that, though, it’s a useful set of data.
Also, one interesting line from the accompanying report:
For people calling on the possibility of online education to solve cost/affordability issues, I’ll simply point out that online education, when done right, is often actually more expensive than traditional face-to-face teaching.
Maybe one possible solution is to “downgrade” some majors to trade school diplomas instead of requiring essentially every young person who wants a full time job with benefits to have a college degree. My friend’s son had a learning disability and never liked going to college to take the required English class etc. and only wanted to learn some technical skills and find a job, but since technical skills he wanted to learn were not plumbing or car repairing, he was told that there was no way he could find a good job without a college degree. He struggled mightily to get the degree and found a job as an IT support guy in a “proper” company. He still hates those “unnecessary” classes he had to take and doesn’t feel he needed them to be successful in his job. In some ways, while the cost of a college degree is increasing, the value of it is actually decreasing since the job market is inflated and employers are “spoiled”. A “regular” college degree is not as effective to lift one up as it used to. You wonder why so many are striving for a degree from an elite school (which is of course not the solution to a system wide problem).
I do like the idea of downgrading some degrees to other sorts of programs. For my kids, our goal was the rounded liberal arts. But an accountant, physical therapist, etc, may not want to choose more than the professional education.
Otoh, one common example is art training at an art institute- yet, the kids who do go to a 4 year college can come out with broader and deeper frames of reference for having been educated in other subjects, which then can show in their work.
dfbdfb makes an important point about recognizing the different sorts of faculty hired by certain universities or specialist programs. Depending on the field, the prominent extra hands or primarily researchers can come in at exorbitant salaries that throw off averages. Where DH taught, and where I work, if you extract those (relatively) few, you end up with a much lower number for rank and file faculty.