I think this is a red herring. Among 2015 college graduates, 70% took out student loans, and those with loans graduated with an average debt of about $35,000. That’s certainly not trivial, but it’s about 14% of the sticker price of 4 years at a top-tier private college or university, which is now around $250K. They’re the price-setters; when the super-elite privates set their sticker prices, other wannabe-elite private colleges come in somewhere behind them. But I just don’t see how you can say student loans at that level are the principal determinant of a $250K price tag on a 4-year private education.
And it’s not the students at top-tier privates that are driving up student indebtedness. It’s students at schools a rung down that aspire to being in the elite and spend accordingly, but don’t have enough money to meet full need—like NYU. And students at public universities that have had their state subsidies slashed and are now charging higher tuition, and don’t have sufficient funds to meet full need. To some extent, the growth in student indebtedness is just shifting to the federal government and federal taxpayers costs that in times past were borne by state government and state taxpayers. States are trying to economize by cutting funding for public higher education. But you can’t get something for nothing. Someone has to pay, and that’s students (and their parents) in the first instance, with federal taxpayers as the ultimate guarantor of those loans.
Thanks for the link. It is very interesting data.
Looking at the table, I do not think I am that far off.
My original post was based on my knowledge (as a student) at a land grant university in the Midwest 3 decades ago. It was a public u so the professor’s salaries were listed. We looked up salaries of various professors that we had and it averaged out about $90K, then (these are ECE professors so they may be paid a bit better compared to peers - I guess I should have looked up those humanity profs). After 3 decades, I would think prof’s’ salaries would be in the mid $150K even for humanity departments.
As for benefits, I think the cost can add up fairly quickly (I agree, generally, one should add 30-35% - but this is academia, I suspect it is much more generous).
My spouse’s company subsidizes a bit over $3K a month for our family health insurance plan - so that is about $40K a year. I get 200 hours of vacation a year (which is not that generous). Assuming $75 hourly rate (150K annual salary) , that is another $15K. Then, you throw in sabbatical (at my school, you get one every 7 years), the amortization would be 150K/7 which is around $20K a year. I suspect the pension component is really expensive (my understanding is that pension is very generous at these colleges). Even at skinflint private companies (like mine), it is not uncommon to get 6% 401(k) matching of your salary. So, that is almost $10K right there. However, I suspect the defined benefit pension is probably much more expensive than that.
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).
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ucbalumnus - wow, that number is astounding.
I remembered hearing on NPR a couple years ago on a segment about profs at Amherst voting down the school’s proposal to offer on-line courses. In that piece, (if I remember correctly), it said that the cost of educating an Amherst student a year was $65K (and I thought that was outrageous).
Have to run to a meeting, but: I have never worked at a university with what I would call a “generous” pension program—they’ve all been 401(k) or 403(b) programs, with some matching but less than the matching level my engineer spouse has gotten in private sector engineering.
And IU has a b-school and med school that pulls the average up.
I certainly have no reason to believe that humanities profs earn $150K now just because ECE profs earned $90K 3 decades ago. Unlike the top 10 percentile in the private sector, faculty salaries have barely kept up with inflation.
$150K would be high for the average tenured professor. According to the AAUP, the average salary for a full professor at a public university in 2014-15 was $115,592. At private, non-religious colleges and universities it was $148,036. At religiously affiliated institutions it was $102,025.
But that’s just full professors. At most schools, associate professors are also tenured. Their salaries are lower: $82,284 on average at public institutions, $92,474 at private non-religious institutions, and $76,881 at religious institutions. So the average tenured professor, combining associate professors and full professors, would be making somewhere around $100K. Of course, there’s considerable variation. Wealthier schools pay much more, because they can. Business, law, and medical school professors make substantially more than the average, but their salaries are also counted in the average; it’s a good bet that most people in the arts and sciences make less than the average. Doctoral degree-granting institutions have higher salaries than schools that offer only bachelor’s or master’s degrees, And so on.
Fringe benefits usually come to somewhere around 30% of base salary on average, but this varies a little by individual. For example, typically a university will offer the same health insurance options to an untenured assistant professor in the humanities making $60K as to a tenured law professor making $200K; the cost of the employer’s share of health insurance premiums is obviously a higher percentage of the $60K salary than of the $200K salary.
Keep in mind that vacation isn’t an extra expense item for a college or university; it merely represents days that the employee continues to draw his or her base salary without doing any work, i.e., it’s already calculated into the base salary, so you can’t add it on as an additional expense. Sabbaticals are trickier to account for, but they’re not a substantial expense item over and above salary, and they can actually save on salary. A typical sabbatical arrangement would be one year off from teaching at half pay, once every seven years. Depending on what the professor teaches, other people in the department may need to pick up those classes while the professor is on sabbatical. Or some or all of those classes may not be taught that particular year, if it’s something really specialized. In either of those cases, there’s no additional direct expense involved. Of course, it’s more expensive than if no one got sabbatical leaves because then your faculty could be a bit smaller, perhaps by as much as 1/7th. But since everyone does get sabbatical leaves, and (like vacation) it’s just built into the amount of work that’s expected for the salary, you can’t count it as an additional expense item over and above salary. The only time there would be an additional expense is if the school needed to hire an adjunct or a contract lecturer to pick up the classes of the professor on sabbatical; but adjuncts usually come pretty cheap, often a few thousand per class, and full-time untenured contract lecturers make on average about half as much as tenured full professors. And remember, the professor on sabbatical is drawing only half salary during the sabbatical year, so even if they need to hire a full-time contract lecturer, it’s pretty much a wash financially. If they can get by with a couple of adjuncts to teach some classes while other full-time faculty pick up the rest, or some simply go untaught that year, then the sabbatical actually represents a cost saving to the school, not an additional expense item.
According to the AAUP, faculty salaries represent 31% of college and university operating expenses, and average faculty salaries are still slightly below where they stood prior to the 2008 recession, i.e., essentially no net gain in 7 years, despite significant increases in tuition in that period. So it’s not faculty salaries that are driving up the cost of higher education.
I’m just worried how, and where, we’ll buy our decorative baskets once the basketweaving degrees are all gone. Some of us just appreciate good old-fashioned craftsmanship, kwim?
Those plastic netting baskets made on a machine are just not the same.
The ignorance about something even as public as professors’ salaries is truly a telling sign of how ignorant many people are of university systems.
But, then again, it’s always much easier to spout rhetoric that you heard from a talking head on the radio or tv than it is to actually do 5 minutes of research…
According to the AAUP, faculty salaries represent 31% of college and university operating expenses, and average faculty salaries are still slightly below where they stood prior to the 2008 recession...
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I am curious, does that 31% number include admins’ salaries?
The average salaries are still below 2008 recession… - ouch.
The ignorance about something even as public as professors' salaries is truly a telling sign of how ignorant many people are of university systems.
But, then again, it’s always much easier to spout rhetoric that you heard from a talking head on the radio or tv than it is to actually do 5 minutes of research…
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Why so snarky - is it because this is an internet forum?
Thanks to dfbdfb’s link, I did look up my kid’s school data. Using the average number, yes - I was off by 4k on the salary. Look, i am not in academia, I am certainly guilty of ignorance about faculty’s compensation. I was just coming with some estimate (in an admittedly hyperbole posting) - yes it may a bit high but am I off by an order of magnitude (or even half an order of magnitude)?
And no, I do not watch tv (I do listen to radio but never tuned to any talking heads be it left or right).
Underwriting health insurance too the tune of nearly 40k blows my mind. But you did say that was corporate. Still that’s mighty high, considering the cost of our insurance if we went straight to the provider, ie, fullpay, would be closer to half that, for 2 adults, two kids. The U negotiated a sweetheart plan and we paid about 8.5% of DH’s gross salary, they paid about 2/3. Yes, absolutely, for lower paid faculty, the percentage would be higher. But he earned nowhere near what some special deal engineering, law prof or borrowed corporate bigwig would.
He did get a full year sabbatical at full pay (other options were less.) Divided by 7 years, it only adds 15%. Pension added about 7.5% and no, the payout was not guaranteed, was market sensitive. DH did get travel benefits, which have since been dramatically reduced. I’m stretching to figure what the rest of the fringe bennies are- free copying? Keeping library books longer? Both of us (separate schools) have had the opp for free bus passes- do we need to count that?
Yeah - I find the health care number outrageous/astonishing too (however, it is a PPO plan, though).
Don’t get me wrong, I am not insinuating that the current college cost is due to (or even partly due) to the compensation of faculties. For crying out loud, you do need to pay reasonable compensation for people who have that kind of qualifications. I just merely point out that for some pedagogic models, the high cost is baked in (as in my kid’s case - she claims that she her classes rarely exceed 10 kids). As ucbalumnus has mentioned previously, the cost to educate a kid at Williams is over $90K a year. I am just not sure whether this is really sustainable for a great deal of colleges if they indeed follow Williams’ model (I am sure it is sustainable for Williams because of the pile of endowment they are sitting on).
Furthermore, I am pretty sure that Williams does not spend that much on extravagant amenities such as sport centers or palatial dinning halls (I do not recall seeing those there). Do they spend a lot on their admin staffs - I do not know.
I totally agree with bclinktok’s analysis above. I think a lot of colleges, both private and state public, are trying to fob off their costs to the unsuspecting tax-paying public. I hate to pick on NYU also - but why do I constantly read stories (anecdotal) about middle class kids who graduated from their well-respected film department with over $200K in debt. Why is the federal government the sole guarantor of the loan. If these guys really believe in their program, shouldn’t they guarantee at least half of those loans - if they can’t, they should not admit those kids who can’t afford their program. As for my current state, I give up. They think it is more important to spend more money on the prison system - this is a deep blue state and as a right-wing old fart, I really scratch my head on their budget priorities. As for my wonderful (or used to be) land grant alma mater, I think they are in dire trouble with regard to the state financial support. The state is going bankrupt trying to patch up the unfunded pension liabilities for their public employees. I do not think funding higher ed is a very big priority right now.
@furrydog, states spend more on prisons instead of education because of laws like “three strikes you’re out” that force judges to hand down long prison terms (funded at taxpayer expense) for crimes (many drug crimes; many of those, non-violent drug crimes).
You’ll have to mostly blame tough-on-crime Republicans for that one.
You'll have to mostly blame tough-on-crime Republicans for that one.
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I am confused.
The three-strikes were overwhelmingly approved by the electorate in an election cycle that also overwhelming voted for Democratic tickets. Oh, I am sure a bunch (if not most) of the knee-jerk tough-on-crime Repubs voted for the proposition too. As an independent, I know that those Repubs will OK this proposition, so it is up to the “sane” majority to stop this nonsense. Yes, I blame the failure to stop this nonsense on the Democrats (as I blame them on Prop 8).
Edited - my apology - don’t want this to get political lest the good thread gets locked down. :o)
@furrydog, OK, blame the people of your state. People want more spending on education and on locking up criminals and other stuff as well as lower taxes.
Sorry, but this is too ridiculous. As already pointed out, the faculty cost at CC’s is far less, and so is their quality. But did the idea of the kind of research that goes on at universities not occur to you, and all the costs that entails? That is a huge part of a university’s mission, so of course the profs teach fewer classes than a CC instructor, and at higher pay. Then there are the specialized buildings and equipment, the continuing need to modernize, the special insurance, etc. For non-research universities, you are paying for lush campuses (as you are at many research universities), small classes, and top minds to teach the students. No one says you have to pay the 40,000+ (after some financial aid). There are other options that are cost effective (relatively speaking) if you don’t think this is a good value, which is perfectly fine. Value is a personal judgement.
While I am sure nearly all research universities could be more frugal without compromising the quality of the product (and remember that product is not just teaching) and trim the cost to the end user slightly, I doubt there are huge savings to be had unless we turn the clock back and really trim those salaries. As has also been pointed out, there are far more administrators than there used to be, but then the demand of parents that their kids be taken care of has gone insane as well. People have mentioned that schools overdo it when it comes to how nice the dorms are, the fancy food options, and the rec facilities for starters. But you know what drove all that? The insistence of the upper-middle class and above parents who pay the majority of the tuition bucks by a long shot. As someone pointed out, at Yale half are full pay and the remainder only average $15,000. Another classic example of the 80/20 rule (80% of the money comes from 20% of the people).
Getting back to the original statement by SuzyQ7, the experience of attending a CC and attending a $60,000+ 4 year college is quite different. They almost don’t belong in the same product category.
@fallenchemist, I have to disagree with your statement about the quality of faculty at CCs being less than at 4-year colleges. I live in a town with a state Flagship university, and several of the faculty also teach at our local CC. Not only do they teach there, they teach the identical course (same syllabus, textbook, tests, etc.), but for less tuition. These faculty also teach at several other State and private universities within a 60 mile radius. Some of the courses they teach are physics, calculus, political science, general chemistry, German, Italian, and several music classes. Perhaps not all CCs have such quality, but some are equal to the education that can be obtained in the first two years at a 4-year university, but at a significant savings.
I think you miss my point, or more likely I said it clumsily. First, these are no doubt adjuncts teaching at both, and teaching some core courses, which is great. They are not the profs that are doing research and publishing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with getting those initial credits at a CC and saving a ton of money. That is part of what I meant by alternatives to the $40,000+ per year. If that wasn’t clear, my apologies. My point is that a student doing this won’t get involved in long term research projects and won’t be exposed in class totally he profs doing the cutting edge research, and that can be a different experience. There are nuances to this answer that are too long to go into, but that is essentially what I meant by lesser quality. Just to repeat, one can certainly get some good courses from good teachers, even great ones, at a CC. The breadth of the experience is just much narrower.
No, college (liberally defined) is not going to leave us.
We have a civilization that is complicated and on course to become much more so. It absolutely depends on various complex bodies of knowledge. And expectation of more discoveries is now entrenched. Transferring existing advanced knowledge to the young is imperative for the life of our civilization, and the acquisition of more knowledge is necessary for the advance of it. The only things which would cause college (liberally defined) to collapse like a burst bubble are immortality and the collapse of civilization.
Of course, it regularly happens that a particular area of knowledge loses value, therefore the transfer of it does, when there is an introduction of a more competent technology or an end of a condition which it addressed.
However, we should expect college as we know it to change a great deal. As with anything else, more efficient, less costly ways are sought out. Online technology stands to drastically change higher education and make it much less expensive eventually. Teaching by computer is cheap to do (fancy real estate not needed), and learning at home is easier than moving yourself places to learn.
Stores used to provide each customer help in selecting purchases, but it was much more costly than self-service is. People used to prepare food from scratch and cook almost everything they ate, and, going further back in time, make their own clothes, but it isn’t efficient. Physical stores are being diminished with the expansion of online shopping (http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/22/a-tsunami-of-store-closings-expected-to-hit-retail.html. They are likely to remain (just) in circumstances in which the value of the physical interaction they allow exceeds these stores’ greater costs. It is reasonable to expect physical “knowledge stores” to follow suit.