You are correct. The marketplace overwhelmingly rewards private colleges with high sticker prices and big discounts, while it punishes those who try transparency in pricing. If you say you’re a $40k product, most consumers think you’re half as good as the $80k product. Parents like to feel that Junior got a big merit scholarship and do not investigate to learn that 90% of the admitted freshmen were offered the same scholarship. This is well established in the enrollment management field.
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Unfortunately that game just leads to higher prices for the full pay families at schools without merit aid.
It’s not merely a matter of perception…it’s real money.
If you run the NP calculator at select U, it will suggest that you can afford a number…Say $35k. That number doesn’t change if the school has a sticker of $37k or $87k…for you.
What it does change is the price for people not getting money. If half of the school doesn’t get financial aid, then the school increases revenue. Sure, they can say that they are increasing aid…but the only thing that changed is how much everyone else is going to pay. The cost of the services delivered doesn’t change.
In the 90’s… Bennington started the process of associating value and cost. It worked for a while, but I don’t think too many think about value for money as much as they hope to have choices.
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I think the schools reducing tuition are probably not strong and hoping that the change brings in more students who are ‘initial’ price focused.
Agreed. Unless a school is growing and has found ways to cut costs, reduced tuition is a sign of possible larger issues.
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Are these specific factors cited in the date presented in the table, or is this your supposition?
Did any of the outrageous expenditures actually improve the quality of education ?
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It is based on numerous articles and facts. Not only does this article present that , I have read other reports inferring the same. Many schools have built fancier buildings , have more administrators but the quality of instruction is not significantly better
Also this is also true in health care where the number of administrators and non physician admin have significantly increased in the last 25 years. From a ratio of 1:2.5 ( physician: non caregiver)now its 1:7. It has increased costs but outcomes are not much different
Even at my alma mater they built the One Penn pavilion at the cost of 1.6 billion- a big fancy building but the healthcare delivery / teaching is not any better. They have many more DEI admins who have minimal clinical responsibilities and hence add to the costs but not to the quality
Probably a lot of this is in managing billing and payments (not DEI stuff).
In terms of health care outcomes and costs, there are numerous other factors as well. For example, many health care procedures and pharmaceuticals exist or are possible now that did not exist or were not possible 25 years ago, but they are expensive, raising health care costs (and insurance costs if they are covered by insurance).
Of course, in a labor intensive industry like education where health care insurance is a common employee benefit, the increased costs of health care find their way into the cost of offering education.
Given the history of racism in medicine*, increasing the effectiveness of health care delivery to people who were historically disadvantaged in health care because of that is one of the ways that increases the effectiveness of the system overall.
*Even today, there is a “White northern European ancestry” bias in some areas of medicine. For example, dermatology recommendations regarding avoiding sun exposure seem to assume that everyone will sunburn and get skin cancer if they spend even a few minutes in the sun without putting on a whole bottle of sunscreen and covering up like conservative women in Afghanistan. (And people then wonder why so many people have low vitamin D.)
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This is a neighbor of mine. She teaches med students, residents, fellows and attendings. The case studies she presents- Asian women dying because they have “low pain thresholds” and therefore their acute appendicitus wasn’t diagnosed until too late; Black men dying when the clear signs of a heart attack were dismissed as heartburn (and the notes include “patient probably overindulged in fried food” with zero evidence of that), the horrifying rate of infant and maternal mortality-- even when controlled for age, health, and income-- among Black women… I think you should revisit your belief that DEI admins “add to the costs but not to the quality”. If you are a member of a racial/ethnic/gender group where your legitimate symptoms are typically dismissed by physicians, “the quality” (i.e. your loved one coming home alive instead of in a box) is in fact, increased.
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No clue - but people are eating better and sleeping in more comfort!!! Ie upgraded amenities for all students which many schools use to promote themselves.
A lot of funding at research universities has gone to research. New labs and equipment, expanded faculty and others, and so on.
Does that improve the quality of the education? I think that is an interest question. But it is plausibly necessary to compete for the most desirable students.
I’m skeptical of your “facts” re: “fancier buildings” especially. Physical plants break down over time. They are regularly serviced (expenses) until they are at - or often beyond - their useful life. At which time they need to be and are replaced (capex). That’s simply unavoidable. And an unassailable fact.
The marginal difference in cost between a new “functional” facility and what you might describe as “fancier” is probably not as much as you think. And far more importantly, I’m no so sympathetic to the argument about construction in this context when taken in a 1-2 decade trend analysis as is the case with nearly every piece I’ve seen about this issue. Physical plants tend to have a lifetime measured in far longer periods. It’s extremely lumpy and can only be truly assessed for trend over far longer periods of time.
As for DEI administrators, I think others have rightly responded.
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That was not the case in the example above
Case reports do not constitute evidence. I respectfully agree to disagree.
agree to disagree about what? That Black women have higher mortality rates during and after childbirth than White women? Which cannot be explained by examining pre-existing conditions, maternal age, or the other factors which contribute to maternal mortality? What are you arguing about exactly?
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For colleges with finite resources (not the Stanfords of the world), there are tough tradeoffs about what to build, and judgments to make about whether your values mesh.
I visited Beloit College with a group of fellow counselors in 2014 (so I’m mentioning it as an example, not as a current description of the campus). We saw a gritty dorm and a run-down dining hall. Underwhelming at best. Then the tour brought us into the soaring, light-filled, LEED-platinum new science building. We all looked at each other: so this is where they put the money. Those are values I can get behind. I’ve been recommending Beloit College ever since.
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I would say that this also applies to the Stanfords of the world. People have enormous misunderstandings about how endowments - especially enormous ones! - actually function. Magic wands do not simply get waved and new buildings constructed willy nilly. These schools also have to make tough tradeoffs, even if it’s “simply” matter of spreading stuff out over a longer than desired timeframe. Believe it or not.
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“Believe it or not,” I’ve been in Harvard alumni leadership for 20 years. Perhaps you didn’t mean to imply I have “enormous misunderstandings” about enormous endowments or believe in magic wands and “will-nilly” expenditures. The ultra-wealthy operate on a different plane of existence from a place like Beloit, earmarked giving notwithstanding. To have dining spaces like Lakeside or Annenberg AND the world’s greatest libraries, labs, financial aid, faculty salaries, etc. is a very rare privilege dependent on multiple, ongoing funding streams. If you’d like to get into the weeds about Harvard fundraising and building – my dear friend is in charge of the 20-year, $1.6 billion House renewal project – we can start another thread.
Am well aware. My spouse is in a similar position at that particular school, thanks.
My point stands. I never stated that such institutions didn’t operate in a different "plane of existence from a place like Beloit. " I stated simply that “[T]hese schools also have to make tough tradeoffs, even if it’s “simply” matter of spreading stuff out over a longer than desired timeframe.”