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https://www.wsj.com/articles/state-university-tuition-increase-spending-41a58100
Colleges Spend Like There’s No Tomorrow. ‘These Places Are Just Devouring Money.’
The nation’s best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators.
Then they passed the bill along to students.
The University of Kentucky upgraded its campus to the tune of $805,000 a day for more than a decade. Its freshmen, who come from one of America’s poorest states, paid an average $18,693 to attend in 2021-22.
Pennsylvania State University spent so much money that it now has a budget crisis—even though it’s among the most expensive public universities in the U.S.
The University of Oklahoma hit students with some of the biggest tuition increases, while spending millions on projects including acquiring and renovating a 32,000-square-foot Italian monastery for its study-abroad program.
The spending is inextricably tied to the nation’s $1.6 trillion federal student debt crisis. Colleges have paid for their sprees in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects.
“Students do not have the resources right now to continue to foot the bill for all of the things that the university wants to do,” said Crispin South, a 2023 Oklahoma graduate. “You can’t just continue to raise revenue by turning to students.”
It has long been clear to American families that the cost of college has gone up, even at public schools designed to be affordable for state residents. To get at the root cause, The Wall Street Journal examined financial statements since 2002 from 50 universities known as flagships, typically the oldest public school in each state, and adjusted for inflation.
At the median flagship university, spending rose 38% between 2002 and 2022.
Only one school in the Journal’s analysis—the University of Idaho—spent less.
The schools paid for it in part by pulling in tuition dollars. The median flagship received more than double the revenue from undergraduate and graduate tuition and fees it did 20 years prior. Even accounting for enrollment gains, that amounted to a 64% price increase for the average student, far outpacing the growth in most big household expenses.
Much of the increase in outlays showed up in the hiring process, for administrators, faculty, coaches and finance experts, the Journal’s analysis found. Salaries and benefits, which usually eat up more than half of operating budgets, rose by roughly 40% at the median flagship since 2002.
The University of Florida in 2022 had more than 50 employees with titles of director, associate director or assistant director of communications, roughly double the number it had in 2017. The school also employed more than 160 assistant, associate, executive and other types of deans last year, up from about 130 in 2017.
Spokesman Steve Orlando said the university is decentralized and different departments have the freedom to hire as they need.
Inflation-adjusted spending on athletic coaches rose by about half between 2010 and 2022 at the median flagship, the Journal’s analysis of data from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database found. The Journal used data from the period with the most complete figures.
Research by James V. Koch, an economist who studies college spending and a former president at Old Dominion University in Virginia, found that public-university trustees approved 98% of the cost-increasing proposals they reviewed, often unanimously. In most states, he said, there hasn’t been anyone to say, “No, you can’t do that.”
More at the link.
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32 majors but only affecting around 400 students. That means many of these majors only have 10 students or so. This is at a college with 25,000 students. That doesn’t sound like overkill to me.
The big thing in my opinion is the complete elimination of the language programs. That is mind boggling.
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Just another thought...With the adoption of internet-based learning platforms for college classes, tuition should have actually gone down. Face it, canned lectures in history or British writers, etc...especially at the 100 and 200 levels should be dirt cheap to deliver and grade.
DIRT CHEAP.
But they ain't.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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And...I understand the appeal of college athletics. After all, I reside in an area that lives and dies with the
Tig-uhs. In 2022, LSU athletics earned $199M. Don't care who you are, that's serious money.Maybe we've let this stuff get out of hand, forgetting what college is supposed to be about.
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Just another thought...With the adoption of internet-based learning platforms for college classes, tuition should have actually gone down. Face it, canned lectures in history or British writers, etc...especially at the 100 and 200 levels should be dirt cheap to deliver and grade.
DIRT CHEAP.
But they ain't.
Just another thought...With the adoption of internet-based learning platforms for college classes, tuition should have actually gone down. Face it, canned lectures in history or British writers, etc...especially at the 100 and 200 levels should be dirt cheap to deliver and grade.
DIRT CHEAP.
But they ain't.
Here’s Luke’s breakdown for the fall semester -
Tuition -$4900
Dorm (4 bed-4 bath apartment on campus) - $5100
Meal plan (80 meals) - $1300
Internet - $180
Technology Fee - $120
Lab Fees - $150
Comprehensive Fee - $3175Tuition at NVCC (the big local community college) is roughly $2800 per semester and another $300 in various fees. Most of the basic credits are the same curriculum as at the universities. Same books, in a few cases even the same adjunct professors.
The big issues, though, are the room and board ($40K per year for a 4 bedroom apartment seems way too high) and that comprehensive fee that there isn’t a lot of information about what it covers…
