{"id":926,"date":"2006-12-14T09:12:18","date_gmt":"2006-12-14T09:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/14\/the-bizarre-economics-of-tuiti\/"},"modified":"2006-12-14T09:12:18","modified_gmt":"2006-12-14T09:12:18","slug":"the-bizarre-economics-of-tuiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/14\/the-bizarre-economics-of-tuiti\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bizarre Economics of Tuition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Times<\/cite> had an article the other day about the warped economics of higher education<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

So early in 2000 the board [of Trustees of Ursinus College] voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 (and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then it waited to see what would happen.<\/p>\n

Ursinus received nearly 200 more applications than the year before. Within four years the size of the freshman class had risen 35 percent, to 454 students. Applicants had apparently concluded that if the college cost more, it must be better.<\/p>\n

“It’s bizarre and it’s embarrassing, but it’s probably true,” Dr. Strassburger said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Dead Dad, predicatbly, is not amused<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At the same time that the tuition was hiked, though, financial aid also had to be dramatically increased, as middle-class families can’t actually afford to pay the exorbitant tuition at top private colleges these days. The cost of attending Union (including tuition, room, board, and various fees) is officially an eye-popping $44,043<\/a>, but a large number of our students pay substantially less than that, thanks to financial aid packages of grants and subsidized loans. The amount of real money that the college receives from tuition is considerably less than $44K per student (I don’t recall the exact figure, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to disclose it).<\/p>\n

And, of course, as the article notes, and the college proudly proclaims on the “costs” page, the tuition paid by the students only covers part of the cost of running the college (even without the financial aid discounting)– Union claims 70%, while figures given for Swarthmore put it at 56%, and I’ve heard numbers as low as 40% bandied about by really wealthy schools. The difference is supplied by endowment income and alumni donations.<\/p>\n

Why are institutions of higher education, which are propulated and operated by extremely smart people, run on such an insane financial system? Beats me, it just happened that way. How can this system possibly survive, given figures like these:<\/p>\n

\n

Average tuition at private, nonprofit four-year colleges — the price leaders — rose 81 percent from 1993 to 2004 , more than double the inflation rate, according to the College Board, while campus-based financial aid rose 135 percent,<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

which clearly show that several years down the road, we’ll be paying students to attend college? I have no idea. The current trend would certainly appear to be unsustainable, but then, we’ve somehow managed to sustain it for something like fifteen years, as I remember the same sorts of hand-wringing conversations about runaway tuition increases back when I was in college.<\/p>\n

To quote the theater owner in Shakespeare in Love<\/cite>, it’s a mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Times had an article the other day about the warped economics of higher education: So early in 2000 the board [of Trustees of Ursinus College] voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 (and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then it waited to see… Continue reading The Bizarre Economics of Tuition<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}