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College Costs
My wife and I attended Syracuse U on AFTOTC scholarships (me after enlisted service and she right out of high school). We graduated with engineering degrees in 1982. A military friend has a daughter getting ready to graduate and was bemoaning the cost of tuition. Out of curiosity, I looked it up.
Our senior year was the most expensive at $5,000; adjusted for inflation, that would be $12,884.61. Tuition this year is $43,318.
That’s an inflation-adjusted increase of 236 percent, or look at it as a multiple of 3.36. All those deans of inclusion and womyn’s studies programs are expensive. With fees added in, I suspect it’s much worse.
BTW, our senior year there was a graduate program in “Nonviolent Studies.” The department office was in a building across an alleyway from the ROTC offices, both on the second floor. The Army ROTC guys hung a sign that said “Violent Studies Program” in their window.
In their defense (no pun intended), one of the grad students came and took part in a seminar about his proposal for a citizen-based nonviolent defense program. As much as we disagreed with him, it was a very civil and interesting discussion. I’m pretty sure today it would involve lots of screaming and a refusal to discuss details.
Published in General
The cost of college has gotten entirely out of control. In addition to all the unnecessary added administrative types you mention, another factor is the Government Student Loan program. Colleges and universities capture this additional government money and just pass the cost along to the students. BTW, what does AFTOTC stand for?
The Army ROTC guys hung a sign that said “Violent Studies Program” in their window.
Haha!
That is absolutely wonderful.
Our son earned an engineering degree in 2010 from Clarkson University (in Potsdam, NY, about 150 miles northeast of Syracuse) on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. Parental happy dance for much saved money!
We paid for his older sister’s degree (in math) at the slightly more expensive University of Rochester. But we did not pay the tuition listed in the university’s brochure (the “rack rate”). Nor did any other students she encountered.
College pricing today is different from what it was 40 years ago. A couple of university officials have told me that the “rack rate” is set high and then discounts are used to attract the university’s desired mix of students. Often fewer than 10% of the student body is paying “rack rate” (usually the less-qualified offspring of wealthy alumni and donors).
On the other hand, yes, the administration proportion of most college budgets has ballooned to be the primary driver for the inflation of actual college costs. As you say, those deans of “inclusion” and “women’s studies” are many and most are pretty well paid.
But also, today’s students demand full food courts in the dining hall (none of the plain hamburgers and mac and cheese casseroles you and I had in the 1970’s and early ’80’s), and full gymnasiums, and elaborate entertainment shows, and on and on and on.
[And many others can speak more eloquently about how the availability of government money (grants and loans) leads to tuition growth to absorb all that money.]
The more government money available the more colleges raise their tuition.
Of course I went to college in the dark ages but I attended UC Riverside for $200 per semester for which I had a scholarship. Lived in the dorms for $135 per month!
Later when I finished up (a few years later in the mid 70’s) I attended Cal Poly Pomona still for only a couple hundred dollars per quarter. One was able to attend a California University or state college and pay just with part time work. Unbelievable huh?
My ex-husband attended UC san Francisco for four years and graduated with a PharmD and only 10K student loans and only that amount because we were married with a child. We were able to pay that off easily within 4 years.
I can’t even imagine what we would do these days!
You probably already saw it above, but Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps.
Or corpse if you are a recent TelePrompTer addicted POTUS.
Oops. Just noticed the typo in my original post. Air Force Titans of Tactical Competence?
Anything the government subsidizes will become more costly and lower quality. Not as bad as the government monopoly in “free” public education, but worse than it would be without it. So the fix is pretty obvious and since our universities are probably beyond redemption we have to provide alternatives from the ground up, just like we should do with all primary and secondary. However, since the top ivy leagues are there for signaling they will continue to attract the best and the brightest so we must at least remove all subsidies from them, they don’t need it and cater to the elite. We should even remove subsidies from the good stuff like basic research. Move those to independent research institutes.
There was a saying that college just gets you your first job. If that’s the case, why not let people study independently,and let their first employer test them as to the employers qualifications? Kids can learn to drink beer on their own.
One of the first grim realizations when you graduate is that nobody cares if you won the chugging contest.
Definitely a barrier to entry for some jobs, or a minimal qualification to apply. The military at the time used it as a minimal requirement for a commission (and still does, as far as I know). Some military jobs (pilots, in particular) then had much more rigorous standards to meet. Interestingly enough, the AF finally has learned the hard way to start searching the NCO grades to fulfill their demands for drone pilots.
Even back then, a degree was no guarantee that a graduate had sufficient skills to communicate successfully on the job; many of my engineer peers had great technical skills but were lacking in communication and people skills.
It’s undeniable that nowadays colleges are doing a lesser job at creating people ready for the workforce.
The degree is a signal to employers that you are safe candidate to hire. You can get things done, you are not a psycho, … The better the school you graduate from the lower the risk to the employer. If you are a boss at a big company and you get to hire one person, then you choose the low-risk candidate. There is no reward for finding a diamond in the rough. There is only punishment for hiring a looser. Bosses stay bosses by avoiding adverse events.
“Meliora” from the class of ‘91
IIRC, the cost per credit hour at SU in 1979 was $113. Now, not only do they get you with the tuition, but they also try to lure you into the student town houses (not dorms) the built at South Campus on Colvin St., and I think they’re talking about turning the Sheraton hotel just off the main campus into luxury student housing. Toss all that in, and you can easily get your annual costs to the $65,000-$70,000 level, and that’s because they can get away with it, because you can get student loans for annual tuition, room and board costs at that level.
I started Cal Poly SLO in ’57 when tuition was around $14 a quarter. It went up to $20 my last quarter, which included a $2 parking fee. Boy did everyone complain about that! I figured that if I could save up $1000 from a summer job I could pay tuition, books and room & board for the school year. I think that for the entire time I was in collage I got $300 from my parents. I had a hard time making the money I needed after the first year due to a broken leg. My last two years I had a full time job while only one class short of a full load. Then again a starting engineering job on the Apollo Program paid $700 a month. Life was good.
The primary purpose of education is to steal from the taxpayer and the student. When the accreditation racket is broken it will be beautiful.
I worked in the Provost Office at George Mason University (Fairfax, Va) from 1999 to 2003. At that time, GMU was proud that they had a lean overhead when other universities were bloating up with bogus administrators. They had a president and two people with ‘vice president’ in their titles. They had a provost and three other vice or assistant provosts. Their claim to fame was that they could provide a good and inexpensive education to the local (mostly commuter) population.
In 2010 I looked up the GMU structure and they had 21 ‘vice presidents’ and 15 people with some version of ‘provost’ in their titles. Their tuition and student living costs have soared. GMU is now indistinguishable from any other high-priced 4-year university in the DC area.
BTW, I am also a 1982 AFROTC graduate (from Iowas State).
The Massive Higher-Ed Scam You’ve Never Heard About:
Renegade University’s Thaddeus Russell on the federal-accreditation racket.
Wipe. It. Out.
I don’t know that people do pay off student loans – if it is possible to just pay the minimums each month, why not? The debt might be erased if the right party gets in power, and who wants to be the only sucker who didn’t get the relief?
Just so they graduate high school with a mastery of indiscriminate sexual encounters.
The theory is that if there are enough of them in a workplace it won’t matter if they’re ready because they bring their own standards with them.
When did it become cool to have more than one vice president?
Sure, but we’re education three times the percentage of our population as we were in the ’60s.
Economies of scale are gonna kick in any day now.
It’s not just the administrators… Its capital costs. Colleges are much more luxurious now in every way. Comparing the dining food courts to the cafeteria’s of yesteryear or example. (Not to mention the multi-million dollar coaches)
Ah sports, the steroidal elephant in the room.
Edit: le mot juster.
This is so outrageous, in multiple, multiple ways. Who owns this stuff anyway? Who is accountable to who?
The accountants, I would assume.
Schools are like a Vegas casino where the games involve risking money to win a degree.
There’s lots of glitz and flashing lights. Booze is plentiful, sex and drugs easily available. There’s a big arena area for floor shows such as football or basketball (or women’s sports on weekdays).
Like a casino, the game is to get you to stay longer and spend more. They don’t want you cooped up in your room studying or whatever, they want you entertained and spending. Sometimes people stay a whole extra year or two just doing the usual stuff.
But there are also the high stakes games you can get into, Masters and Doctorates. That’s when they start comping you rooms and such.