Many Students are Paying More as Colleges Spend Less On Them
The situation is more acute at public institutions.
Forbes reports.
College Students Are Paying More, But Many Schools Are Spending Less On Them
For the past 30 years, U.S. colleges and universities have been increasing tuition costs by 2% to 5% per year. But that doesn’t mean all those dollars are allocated for increased school spending on student education. Despite the tuition hikes, education spending is flat or falling at many public and private institutions. With revenue streams like state subsidies drying up, colleges aren’t relying as heavily on those means to pay for the cost of education—they’re making students and families pay for more of it themselves.
The percent of subsidies spent on education declined through the 2000s and hit a decade-low in 2011, according to government data collected by the Delta Cost Project, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that performs yearly studies of education spending.
The situation appears to be more acute at public schools than private ones, Delta Cost Project data from 2002 to 2012 suggests. On average, private institutions are increasing their education spending along with the tuition hikes, but not so at public institutions. While students are paying more for their education, public colleges and universities are spending less money on them—less bang for more buck. One reason public schools are relying more heavily on students to pay for their own education can, in part, be traced back to the 2008 recession.
“States knew that higher education does have another source of revenue—students—compared to lots of [other] functions of the state like prisons and roads,” says Donna Desrochers, deputy director of the Delta Cost Project.
College Students Are Paying More, But Many Schools Are Spending Less On Them (Forbes)
Comments
No offense but I feel like I just read “duh”…of course, the data would indicate more public than private considering which one receives the subsidy.
I don’t agree with the rising costs of tuition, and I hate many things about my career field (namely administrative bloat and wasteful spending).
However, I’d say it is very difficult to measure all of the ways university spending adds value to tuition payers and alumni.
Two examples:
-A university spends more money on funding internal research grants
-A university spends more money to secure a new dean with more connections and networking skills to provide career/internship agreements for students matriculating from his/her college.
Neither of these examples would likely show up on the usual metrics for “money spent on students” but it would be a hard argument to suggest that neither increased prestige nor increased career prospects add value to a student’s education.