Hank: Good morning, John. Since 1980, the cost of college in the US
has more than tripled, rising faster even than the cost of medical care. Around 70% of students in the US will graduate
with some amount of debt, and the average amount for those students is $29,000, that's
$312 a month for ten years of student loan payments. Now, there are some ways in which you can
pay less, and if you're interested in those, I put a link in the description, but it's
an undeniable fact that the costs of education in America have increased greatly and that
student loan debt is becoming a burden, so what are colleges spending that extra money
on? Well, it's complicated. Let's start with the fact that since 2008,
colleges have actually been spending less money per student, but students have been
spending more money per student. How's that possible? Well, you might remember than in 2008, there
was something of a financial crisis. State budget shrank, and so did some institutional
endowments, meaning that students paid more and got less. That trend actually stretches back even a
bit farther, with the top amount being paid per student by states happening in 2001. But of course, these costs have been increasing
since way before 2001, and colleges are spending way more money than they used to, so what
do schools spend their money on? Well, the first thing you think of is academic
instruction, and that is still the biggest category of spending. College professors are expensive, and in some
cases, you're asking them to come teach when they could be working in the private sector
for pharmaceutical companies or investment banks and making millions of dollars a year,
and you want those really highly qualified amazing professors teaching and so yeah, sometimes
they get paid a lot. The average amount of money a college professor
makes is around $150,000, but some professors make upwards of a half a million dollars a
year. But during the last 10 or 15 years, during
which the college costs literally doubled, the cost of instruction basically kept pace
with inflation. Part of the way schools have done that is
by now hiring on as many tenure track professors and having a ton of like, part-time and grad
student and adjunct professors who do not get paid very well at all. So the cost of instruction overall is definitely
not where this big bump came from. The costs that have definitely increased a
lot are in a jumble of different categories that different institutions track differently
and so are very difficult to tease out apart from each other, but there has been some really
great and careful research done on this stuff, so here are the increases in a few categories. Operations and grounds-keeping, room and board,
general administration, academic support, and a nebulous thing which has increased more
than any other category among four year bachelor's degree programs, "student services", which
includes everything from concerts to intramural sports to marketing to tutors. It appears that what's driving this is, in
a word, sales. Colleges are acting more like businesses and
treating students more like customers. Schools compete with each other, and in a
world where the costs are really high anyway, it starts to look like a little fuzzy when
a student's deciding between $310 payments for ten years and $340 payments. It's only $30 a month, and if one school has
really nice dorms, a well supported tutoring program, nice athletic fields, a super dope
climbing wall, a celebrity level professor, cushy mattresses, and local, organic produce
and cafeteria salad bar,, then both the parents, who are probably footing a big hunk of the
bill, and prospective students are likely to choose the more expensive option. Some of those things are worthwhile, others
don't have much use beyond, like, looking pretty cool on prospective student weekend. Building and running a 30,000 person institution
that has facilities that outpace the quite nice country club is expensive. Over the last 10 years, non-academic employees
have been hired 50% faster than academic employees at colleges and universities, and top-level
administrators who are responsible for increasing that enrollment and revenue so that there's
money for everybody to spend, their pay raises have been more than double that of academic
employees. The average school now has about one non-academic
employee for every 10 students. There are some private schools where that
ratio is more like 1 to 3. Now, the absolutely nutso thing about all
of this is that it still works, because even at these juicily inflated prices, college
is still a good deal. Money spent on a Bachelor's, Associate's,
or Professional degree yields a higher return than the stock market, even in dropping out
of college after 18 months has a higher yield than the stock market, though not as high
as graduating, so in a way, colleges are just working their way up to costing as much as
the value they provide. But I think that we can all safely agree that
college should not be about maximizing revenue, especially for state schools. The question isn't really whether college
is a good deal, it's whether college could be a better deal. It seems a little like the increase in spending
is kind of a natural outgrowth of a capitalist society and people making decisions that benefit
them, at least in the short term, but it's worth asking if treating America's students
like customers is, in the end, going to be a disservice to everyone. Maybe we shouldn't be selling students an
experience. Maybe we should be providing them with as
much enrichment and, dare I say it, education as possible. Because while it is important that college
is a sound monetary investment, it is also important, possibly more important, that students
get through our higher education system knowing more about the world and about themselves,
and I don't think that that has to be a monetary thing, and I definitely don't think it needs
to cost $40,000 a year. I don't know, maybe I'm crazy. John, I'll see you on Tuesday.
As a student services professional, I'd like to take the time to talk about my experiences in higher education. Because I think Hank misses some important points. I'm going to try and not write a novel (I've already written enough on the subject getting my degrees!), but this might get long.
Student services, also know as student affairs at some institutions, is a relatively new field in higher education. In the early days of the colonial colleges faculty often served in multiple roles to help keep colleges and universities open. When higher education opened up to public after WW2, the number of students attending exploded. As did the number of services needed to keep everything together. On top of that, student development theories emerged in the 60s that shifted some of the ways in which administrators viewed learning and how they supported it. But since then, state support has been drastically reduced.
Student affairs is a field that covers a lot of the jobs that faculty do not have time to do (while they chase tenure and do research, teaching, and service) or that they just plain do not want to do. We help ensure that schools are accredited and compliant with state and federal regulations (financial aid is a beast!). We offer tutoring and academic support like advising to students. We engage students in experiential learning opportunities like service-learning to get them to think complexly. We provide counseling and medical services for students. We host multicultural and diversity centers to help support minority students and challenge majority students on important issues. We council student groups and help minimize legal issues, especially in areas where the courts have mandated that institutions are liable (greek affairs is a big one!). We help students in crisis and are there to guide them through the transitions that they face as they become adults.
Much like it's faculty counterparts, entry and mid-level professionals (who more often than not have advanced degrees) are overworked and under-paid.
The "climbing wall effect" is real, but it's not as outrageous as the hype seems for most institutions. The biggest offenders seem to be small, private colleges that need to act more like businesses to maintain enrollment numbers. Certainly a state institution has less leeway in adding fancy features due to state oversight. I'd argue that the main forces behind "administrative bloat" are college presidents and athletic directors/coaches who have multi-million dollar salaries.
In all of my research on the subject, it is clear that a well supported student has a better chance of graduating with a degree, and a lot of student affairs works to provide that support so that faculty members can get down to business with creating new knowledge. Both fields are important.
I also think that /u/TurielD makes a great point. Education has often been touted as a lighting rod to overcoming institutional barriers associated with poverty and many families see the cost of higher ed as a necessary evil needed to access the benefits. We are just now having national conversations about college access and where that tipping point is in society.
TL;DR: I would argue that there has been an increase in institutions providing support services to students as well as academics and that's not a bad thing. I think we need to continue conversations about college access and debt because they are important, but we shouldn't minimize the efforts of folks working to support students and help keep institutions open.
*Edit for grammar.
Education should be free. Why can't the world just work like that?
Here's a fun thing to consider... Salaries of professors may be that high, yes... Except not in community colleges. That number turns out to be way, WAY lower in those cases, even for full time profs. One of ours confessed to us at one point that he was earning in the ballpark of 35k, and he was the lottery-selected department chair for that year. And yet, tuition even in community colleges is going absolutely insane.
Perhaps what's worse is that these community colleges are so eager to cut their course load. Now, it varies from department to department, but in the department I just left at the CC I attend? They had a mandatory class cancellation for every course that wasn't within five seats of being Full by the time one week before the class hit.
Sufficed to say, it was bad in every direction. Just one of the many, MANY reasons I left that department, not the least of which being that the department had recently made the decision to increase their maths prerequisites because "Students that get higher scores in math just make more attentive students", as one instructor explained. They weren't bumping the requirement because the material needed it, they were doing it to pad out their pass/fail metrics. And given the quality of instruction involved, it wasn't going to help.
Bernie Sanders 2016 for free 4 year college!
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/05/20/3660351/2016-candidate-wants-make-college-free-taxing-wall-street/
http://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident
Given that most of you are not Australian, you're probably not aware that our government, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that uni (college) students aren't paying enough and we therefore need to be more like the US. Fifty years ago uni was completely free, and now students are going to have to pay tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Uni/college clearly doesn't have to be expensive, because it isn't in a lot of countries, but capitalism ensures that it is.
I really pitty you Americans. Your government prides itself in being the richest and freest in the world, yet half your people can't afford college education. You really need to start revolting the shit your government gets away with.