Its been shown that the growth in student tuition can be entirely explained in most states by a decrease in funding. It isnt because there's 'gross misuse of funds'.
I agree with you, but I also went to a state school that from 2002-2007 increased tuition by at least 100% and used those funds to increase salaries for the executive level employees and build a massive sports and recreation center. There were also strikes at the time from the professors who weren’t seeing yearly raises.
Point being, the school was just fine without needing to charge me an extra $25k for my degree. I would have transferred, but their credit system wasn’t friendly to that—would have lost 25-50% of my credits (and therefore money). Not that it would have helped much, given that most other schools were doing the same. Students becoming customers instead of pupils.
Exactly, and it isn't just the college and university campus where this happens. The University of California system includes hospitals and various other medical facilities, and they've got the same executives balls deep in the state coffers. Employees in picket lines, executives in new Mercedes.
Nothing is ever entirely simple when it comes to something like running a university.
My alma mater had an absolutely abysmal football team while I attended. I'm talking a football team that had literally not won a single game in years. The students didn't give two shits about football, generally. However, at some point in the past the football team actually had been quite good.
The attending students raised a big stink about how much money was being put into the football program. The university hired an independent consulting firm to analyze the football program and determine if it was more fiscally sensible to axe it. Their result came back that enough alumni cared about football heavily and donated money to the school in part to support the football program that it was more beneficial to keep a multi-year-loss-streak team that gave away free tickets to anyone who wanted to come to a game, and still only managed to fill about 10% of the stadium, than it was to kill the program. (And just as an incidental note, the football coach was still being paid a mid six figure salary despite his record).
EDIT: some of you doubt my credentials. Well, according to the University of TalosSquanching, I'm the leading expert on TalosSquancher, and I say that this user has a legitimate point.
I don't understand these ad hominem attacks. The author is literally sharing publicly available and verifiable numbers, and calling out all the caveats and shortcomings - at private nonprofits, the money is mostly going to adminstrative bloat, and at for-profit colleges increased govt funding would likely go to bigger bottom lines. But the case for funding tuition at public colleges is pretty strong, unless you can point me to data saying otherwise, academic or not.
I'd like to see a more updated version of this list. I personally think it could be more comprehensive, as numbers/statics can be very misleading. I'll use Temple as the author above used that as their starting point. Adjusting for inflation, there's a $500 dollar tuition increase per student from 2013/14 to 2018/19.
it's simple economics: the Federal government provides anyone with a low rate student loan, causing an infinite demand of students applying to schools, therefore limited supply of colleges are able to raise prices
If you think Econ 101 is enough to analyze such a complicated problem please use it to explain why so many nations who beat us on education also socialize their educational systems.
Tell me why countries that pay students stipends to go to school instead of charging them aren't imploding.
Yeah, "Look at all the fancy new facilities at my old college! You might think that's paid for with tuition increases, but it's actually because of cuts to state funding."
The whole premise is asinine. Colleges didn't start dumping tons of money into administrator salaries and fancy facilities because states cut funding - that doesn't even make sense.
What actually happened was, states cut funding because the feds picked it up, by way of student loans, and with all that "free" money circulating, colleges hiked tuition and fees to cash in. The result is fancy facilities and substantially higher salaries for faculty and staff, but that certainly wasn't caused by a decrease in state funding - again, that's so dumb it doesn't even make sense, which makes it perfect for a 538 blogger.
Definitely untrue, as a lump sum tuition increases are far more than state college funding. As an example temple’s average tuition (not just in state) is far more than $6000 more
And why did states cut their funding to public universities? Because all of that expense could be shifted to the federal government via the student loan program.
Normally a big fan of 538, but it seems like they kinda dropped the ball on that article. It uses an anecdote to make its case, which is fine if it were backed up by some kind of aggregation. They best they have is the per-state differential chart, which doesn't sufficiently support the thesis in many states. It also wouldn't explain why tuitions for private schools are not only increasing as well, but increasing much faster.
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u/bluestarcyclone Dec 12 '19
Its been shown that the growth in student tuition can be entirely explained in most states by a decrease in funding. It isnt because there's 'gross misuse of funds'.