“In the college arms race, students are paying more and more”
October 6, 2009
They seek and devour every resource in sight, with few constraints and even less restraint. At least that’s how
Why does college cost so much?
“”Our sole goal is to find cookies and stuff our mouths,”” says Ehrenberg, who directs the
Of course, the U.S. higher-education system has long been the envy of the world. A college degree has become a requirement to enter almost any profession, and can increase lifetime earnings by a million dollars or more.
So could it be that those who are outraged at the cost of tuition are somehow romanticizing the past? We’ve heard the stories: How kids could once walk to the corner store without Mom or Dad to keep them safe. How you could fill up the tank for
The reality doesn’t always match. Violent-crime rates have plummeted over the past 15 years. The real price of gas has fluctuated over a century. But when it comes to tuition, the stories check out.
If tuition and fees had risen at the same pace as inflation over the past 30 years, today it would cost
Add food and a place to stay, and the cost of attending a prestigious private university can now run
Yet only a sliver of all that extra tuition is being put into classroom teaching. According to an analysis by the nonprofit
One way universities have kept instruction costs down is by employing fewer tenured professors and more low-paid adjunct and part-time faculty. Twenty years ago, two-thirds of university faculty and staff were employed full-time, while these days, it’s barely half. Among full-timers, wages vary according to rank. At the
Over time, two forces in particular have been responsible for much of the run-up in tuition — one at the public institutions, the other at the privates.
For public universities, the problem has been with state governments, which have systematically taken money away. Facing spiraling costs for prisons, health care and K-12 education, lawmakers have time and again taken their axes to university finances. In the early 1990s at the UW, students paid for a third of the cost of their education, while the state picked up the rest. These days, students are paying 58 percent of the freight.
Outside the public system, something else has been going on. Twenty years ago, private, liberal-arts colleges collected all their tuition and then gave back about
While some of the extra help has gone to poorer students, much has gone into the heated competition for academic achievers. These top students are lured with “”merit-based”” scholarships. If a college attracts better students, after all, it can lead to a better reputation, better professors, better rankings. And, in the end, more cookies.
Driving east to
This small
The cost of attending
Taking a tour of the campus is
While Marie has been looking at schools, Nancy has been polishing her resume. After years as a stay-at-home mom, she’s looking for work to help pay the enormous college bills that are about to start arriving for Marie and her two younger siblings.
Cost is a huge concern, says Nancy, whose husband is a software salesman. “”We’ve been saving since she was born. I was told back then it would cost
On the tour, a student guide,
“”Sometimes we are asked, is all that necessary?”” Bridges says. “”But we want to support the students in their health and well-being.””
From Bridges’ office, you can see the renovations finishing up on the athletic center, with its spectacular new climbing wall, 40 feet high. To pay for the improvements, the college rounded up about
Beyond student services, Bridges says, two main factors have been driving up costs at
Ehrenberg, the
While machines and computers can help a company like
One pernicious contributor to rising tuition is the annual college rankings put out by
In
On the optical table, light beams shoot through a silicon wafer. One day, Hochberg hopes, the experiments will give birth to new, more efficient computer chips that operate not with electricity but with light.
The UW last year lured the 29-year-old rising star in electrical engineering to campus with a salary of about
The expense of establishing Hochberg at the UW, paid for by a variety of public and private sources, is just one example of the big price colleges pay to keep current in fields like engineering, physics and medicine.
The entire research enterprise — more than a billion dollars a year at the UW alone — works something like a business, with the university providing the seed capital. The idea is that once researchers are established, they will support the cost of their own work with outside grants. But providing that initial capital can be expensive for any university. Top research institutions, eager to create intellectual “”clusters”” of people who lead their chosen fields, have gotten themselves into a costly arms race to attract talent.
The amount that universities spend on disciplines like science and engineering can be hidden by the way all undergraduates are charged the same tuition. That freshman sitting alongside 400 others in his Sociology 101 class is actually subsidizing both the senior in the same subject, with her small tutorials, and the freshman taking physics.
Still, undergraduate tuition and fees at the UW —
There’s an even cheaper option that’s often overlooked in the debate over tuition: community colleges. In this state, annual tuition remains an affordable
Even with the economy in its deepest funk since the Great Depression, there is little sign that college costs will level off any time soon. While some private colleges have scaled back tuition increases this year, public universities like the UW have gone the other way, jacking up rates to offset the latest round of state budget cuts.
Just months ago, private colleges were worried the bad economy could reduce demand. But now it seems that enrollment figures are holding up. The deep cuts to public universities, especially in places like
College endowments have shrunk along with the withering economy. To shore up finances, some private colleges, including
Students are the ones picking up more of the tab as costs go up. Two-thirds now borrow at least some money for their college education, up from half in the early 1990s. The average amount borrowed has doubled over that time to about
With the job market uncertain, it seems clear an increasing percentage of students will default on their loans in years to come.
Despite the economy, universities have barely slowed the remarkable run-up in pay for top administrators and coaches. At the UW, for instance, President
“”What is the purpose of college?”” he asks. “”To study, or to be offered a community or camp experience? Young adults will find ways to play, worship and organize without the assistance of college authorities. So why are students paying for services that are not directly educational?””
In the end, the biggest driver of college costs may be our own willingness to pay. Even as tuition has skyrocketed over the past 20 years, postsecondary enrollment has risen from 12 million students to 17 million.
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(c) 2009, The Seattle Times.
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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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