PG Tremont Waters (UConn Offer)

[Paesano]

It's not true. I debunked it on another thread.

MY LONG ANSWER:

Reduced state support has caused the rise. You can take the amount reduced per student and add it to the tuition, and the expenditures would be equal (i.e. if state spending per student was $15k in 1995 and $8k in 2015, all you need to do to understand how tuition jumped from $2500 to $9500 is to add the $7k reduction to $2500. Track expenditures over the time period rather than "cost."

When a cost is subsidized, the removal of subsidy creates an exponential increase.

For instance, if the expenditure per student is $20k a year, and the tuition is $1k a year, then a rise in tuition to $10k looks like a 1,000% increase. People's eyes bulge out. But from the point of view of expenditures, the school might have only risen from $20k a year per student to $25k over 20 years. Much more in keeping with CPI (the latest figures I've seen show that expenditures are tracking below CPI, and just last week we saw an article about a prospective B12 school -- Cincy -- that has had a huge reduction in expenditures since 2008).

Your other question is more interesting and probably differs state by state. Administrative costs are up 300% in a decade. But the average budget for administration has now gone from 1% of the total budget to 3%. The extra 2% is not enough to explain the jump in tuition. Administrators argue that they are in a new regulatory environment and technological era which requires more professional administration than ever before (think of UConn, required to keep in line with the NCAA, a whole slew of tech people on campus to install and run systems, laboratory regulations, offices of diversity, Title IX, health care, benefits, equal opportunity, student affairs, etc.).

It gets even more interesting when you realize where the savings come from. Tenured or tenure-track faculty (i.e. full-timers) have gone from over 77% nationally in 2005 to under 30% now. This is how expenditures have been held down, as well as clawbacks in salary for full-timers. When a university does this, however, it is not simply a matter of hiring cheaper adjuncts or clinical faculty, but then you need more administrators to actually oversee things like a General Education program in which most of the adjunct and clinical faculty teach. In other words, the hiring of cheaper instructors requires more administrators. It used to be that full-time faculty did most of that work for free (i.e. academic hiring, curriculum, governance, policy), but now that this part of universities has become huge behemoth, administrators have taken over.

First, I asked if the legislature is really requiring UConn to increase its minority enrollment from 14% to 37%.

Second, it sounds like your discussion on costs is focusing on state universities. If so, how do you explain private university costs going up by 300%? Was CT subsidizing Yale and MA subsidizing Harvard?

Third, what are you including in "administrative costs"? If find it hard to believe administrative salaries are only 3% of the budget of major universities and it becomes even harder to believe if you include the cost of the buildings needed to house the new administrators as well as to provide the space needed for operating the various non-academic activities. And I haven't even begun to touch on new faculty and facilities required to teach new programs that didn't exist 30 years ago but people feel are now necessary due to social justice arguments.

 

[scotty0330]

To quote hooper in another thread...about that tremont waters

 

[upstater]

First, I asked if the legislature is really requiring UConn to increase its minority enrollment from 14% to 37%.

Second, it sounds like your discussion on costs is focusing on state universities. If so, how do you explain private university costs going up by 300%? Was CT subsidizing Yale and MA subsidizing Harvard?

Third, what are you including in "administrative costs"? If find it hard to believe administrative salaries are only 3% of the budget of major universities and it becomes even harder to believe if you include the cost of the buildings needed to house the new administrators as well as to provide the space needed for operating the various non-academic activities. And I haven't even begun to touch on new faculty and facilities required to teach new programs that didn't exist 30 years ago but people feel are now necessary due to social justice arguments.

After the Supreme Court banned Affirmative Action a decade ago, it is now illegal to have race-based considerations in admissions. Consequently, the %s of African-Americans has dropped at UConn. It is now less than 5% of a state population of 10%. Hispanics are 8% at UConn out of a state population of 16%. Asians are overrepresented at 10% with a population of 5%. Mixed race, Native-American, Islander added together are 5%. Add in 10% foreign students, and up have your current number of 37% up from 14%.

Private schools have their own thing and can do what they want because they are private. They only comprise 14% of total college students. The tuition at privates has not risen as fast as at publics because of the high tuition in the first place. 300% Can you show me what school went up that much. I attended Boston University in the mid 1980s when tuition was 22-24k, and it is now 49k. I think the privates are up 150% over 30 years. One of the reasons this is happening is because privates charge more tuition than the cost per student. In other words, people who pay full freight are paying money to a university that is not expending as much on the person paying. They are taking in more than their costs. Why? Because they are trying to maintain need-blind policies which redistribute 35-40% of tuition dollars in the form of scholarships. This is how they operate.

New programs? Social justice arguments? I have no idea what you're on about, and I am going to say I probably would disagree with whatever you are imagining anyway.

 

[Chief00]

Jesus Christmas!!!!! Is this really true? Do you have a link to a story on this? Can someone confirm it?

I hope this isn't accurate. Over the last 30ish years the CPI has increased about 2X. College costs over the same period have increased about 4X. Reduced federal support is partially to blame but accounts for nowhere near the 2X difference. I read a great article recently that outlined how much administrative costs have increased over that time period. The claim was that these costs are the majority cause of the 2X difference between inflation and college cost increases. Many of these costs stem from initiatives that really have very little to do with academics. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

We are at 33-34% minorities now for Freshman. No fair to white kids with better SATs but I understand the need to give minorities a chance - my own view is go ahead and try this but for CT residents increase enrollments - so qualified whites kids won't be disadvantage - This would reduce out of state students - who pay twice the tuition - so unlikely to happen.

 

[beakumhawks]

This thread went to poop pretty quickly. I blame Fishy. Then again, I blame Fishy for pretty much everything. ISIS - Fishy 9/11 - Fishy Ghostbusters remake - Definitely Fishy. Rumors of Tom being dead - you all know the answer to that one. Hell, it would probably be harder for me to find something Fishy is not to blame for.

Give me a second....


Nope. Got nothing.

 

[upstater]

We are at 33-34% minorities now for Freshman. No fair to white kids with better SATs but I understand the need to give minorities a chance - my own view is go ahead and try this but for CT residents increase enrollments - so qualified whites kids won't be disadvantage - This would reduce out of state students - who pay twice the tuition - so unlikely to happen.

Wow---I guess facts aren't going to stop this complete and total canard.

 

[B1GEast]

This thread went to poop pretty quickly. I blame Fishy. Then again, I blame Fishy for pretty much everything. ISIS - Fishy 9/11 - Fishy Ghostbusters remake - Definitely Fishy. Rumors of Tom being dead - you all know the answer to that one. Hell, it would probably be harder for me to find something Fishy is not to blame for.

Give me a second....


Nope. Got nothing.

Beak, how about you just run a mafia game?

 

[Paesano]

After the Supreme Court banned Affirmative Action a decade ago, it is now illegal to have race-based considerations in admissions. Consequently, the %s of African-Americans has dropped at UConn. It is now less than 5% of a state population of 10%. Hispanics are 8% at UConn out of a state population of 16%. Asians are overrepresented at 10% with a population of 5%. Mixed race, Native-American, Islander added together are 5%. Add in 10% foreign students, and up have your current number of 37% up from 14%.

Private schools have their own thing and can do what they want because they are private. They only comprise 14% of total college students. The tuition at privates has not risen as fast as at publics because of the high tuition in the first place. 300% Can you show me what school went up that much. I attended Boston University in the mid 1980s when tuition was 22-24k, and it is now 49k. I think the privates are up 150% over 30 years. One of the reasons this is happening is because privates charge more tuition than the cost per student. In other words, people who pay full freight are paying money to a university that is not expending as much on the person paying. They are taking in more than their costs. Why? Because they are trying to maintain need-blind policies which redistribute 35-40% of tuition dollars in the form of scholarships. This is how they operate.

New programs? Social justice arguments? I have no idea what you're on about, and I am going to say I probably would disagree with whatever you are imagining anyway.

I don't think your BU numbers are correct. I don't think Bennington's TOTAL cost was that high in 1986! That number may be close to the total cost near, or soon after, the end of your undergrad days. But, even then, you are comparing total cost then to tuition now.

I will give you Cornell's numbers as they are pretty relevant to me right now. In 1986, the tuition was $11,500 (COLLEGES' TUITION UP 7% TO 8%; TOTAL BILL CAN EXCEED $16,000). In 2016, the tuition is $50,712 (Tuition Rates and Fees | Cornell University Division of Financial Affairs) So, you are right, it isn't 300%. It is 340%!!!! Sorry, but not all of that is explained by the fact that full freight students are being used to subsidize students getting aid. And do we know for sure that practice did not occur in 1986 also?

 

[beakumhawks]

Can't do a mafia game. Would love to but am too busy during the day. Plus, you guys really suck at it. I blame Fishy (of course)

 

[BUConn10]

Tuition rises because the US government releases its max borrowed allotment each year and that money is essentially no questions asked. So privates just match that number bump each year. The problem is too many people going to college, students who have no place in a higher education setting bloat the whole system.

 

[upstater]

I don't think your BU numbers are correct. I don't think Bennington's TOTAL cost was that high in 1986! That number may be close to the total cost near, or soon after, the end of your undergrad days. But, even then, you are comparing total cost then to tuition now.

I will give you Cornell's numbers as they are pretty relevant to me right now. In 1986, the tuition was $11,500 (COLLEGES' TUITION UP 7% TO 8%; TOTAL BILL CAN EXCEED $16,000). In 2016, the tuition is $50,712 (Tuition Rates and Fees | Cornell University Division of Financial Affairs) So, you are right, it isn't 300%. It is 340%!!!! Sorry, but not all of that is explained by the fact that full freight students are being used to subsidize students getting aid. And do we know for sure that practice did not occur in 1986 also?

Well I started mid 80s, I am class of 1990.

Again, private schools can do whatever they want. They are private schools. No one has any control of them.

Cornell is also not hiring as many adjuncts. Why? Because it knows that people aren't paying 50k a year for to take courses with someone making $2,500 per course.

The math of need blind aid is simple to see. If the tuition was $20,000 years ago, and the cost per student was $12,000 (60% of $20k as per need-blind policy) the school effectively increasing tuition by $8k a year over what it spends. If you take the same dynamic and do it at $40k, then the school is charging you $16k more than it spends.

This is why need-blind admission jacks up tuition at these schools. The higher the tuition goes, the more you need to retain need-blind policies.

Plus, have you ever plugged in these figures into a CPI calculator?

$20k at 3% over 30 years = $48,500.

And if you're starting in 1986, you are looking at CPIs of 4.4, 4.4, 4.6, 6.1, 3.1, 2.9, 2.7, 2.7, 2.5, 3.3, for the first decade.

A much better study of college costs would be to look at spending over the last 30 years. How quickly has spending gone up?

The study I was just looking at showed spending at a school like Cal-Berkeley increased from $1.2B to $1.7B from 1991 to 2011 (20 years). I'd say that's probably lower than inflation.

Tuition at Berkeley is up over 1,000% during that period, well outpacing inflation. But costs aren't.

 

[upstater]

Tuition rises because the US government releases its max borrowed allotment each year and that money is essentially no questions asked. So privates just match that number bump each year. The problem is too many people going to college, students who have no place in a higher education setting bloat the whole system.

Max number borrowed of subsidized loan? Max borrowed right now is $5.8k per year. It was $3k in the 1980s.

If you're talking private loans, then there is no max at all. No upper limit.

 

[BUConn10]

Max number borrowed of subsidized loan? Max borrowed right now is $5.8k per year. It was $3k in the 1980s.

If you're talking private loans, then there is no max at all. No upper limit.

For example for me at BU, my max allotted amount I can borrow through FAFSA this year is around 98k based on my program and calculated yearly based on cost of living in a given area. I'm not too up to date on how t works for other programs but via federal subsidized and unsubsidized my max is 98k. They rose it 2k this past year and so did BU my tuition.

 

[upstater]

For example for me at BU, my max allotted amount I can borrow through FAFSA this year is around 98k based on my program and calculated yearly based on cost of living in a given area. I'm not too up to date on how t works for other programs but via federal subsidized and unsubsidized my max is 98k. They rose it 2k this past year and so did BU my tuition.

Why would anyone though take out $98k for a $60k school?

And why would the move from $96k to $98k impact the rise in tuition at Boston U. by $2k? That doesn't make sense, not when the cost is $60k.

I mean, how many people are taking advantage of the new $2k rise? This is just coincidence.

I also went to Boston U. over some other pretty well known schools BECAUSE of BU's scholarship policies, so I was a beneficiary of BU's tuition, which was the highest in the nation except for Bennington when I went there.

 

[BUConn10]

Why would anyone though take out $98k for a $60k school?

And why would the move from $96k to $98k impact the rise in tuition at Boston U. by $2k? That doesn't make sense, not when the cost is $60k.

I mean, how many people are taking advantage of the new $2k rise? This is just coincidence.

I also went to Boston U. over some other pretty well known schools BECAUSE of BU's scholarship policies, so I was a beneficiary of BU's tuition, which was the highest in the nation except for Bennington when I went there.

I have to take out nearly that max amount because my tuition this year costs $74k and I need some money for living expenses in an expensive city. Unfortunately I'm not from a wealthy family like a large group of my classmates so I have no other way to pay and don't get any financial support from family or anything. I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place, sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it at this cost.

 

[upstater]

I have to take out nearly that max amount because my tuition this year costs $74k and I need some money for living expenses in an expensive city. Unfortunately I'm not from a wealthy family like a large group of my classmates so I have no other way to pay and don't get any financial support from family or anything. I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place, sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it at this cost.

You are indeed a special case. BU tuition is $49k, and then there are fees and living expenses.

But the vast majority of students are totally unaffected by a rise in the max from $96k to $98k. This would not figure into BU's thinking at all.

Student loans are a weight. 10% of your salary for 20 years. I started accumulating them after my undergrad days and racked up $60k. Wife did the same. But that was the price we paid for multiple grad degrees and effectively getting our first academic full-time jobs in our early 30s. I can't see how the best university in the universe is worth that much money yearly in loans. No way.

Just think, all you need to do to figure out what the education is worth from the school's point of view is to take the total budget and then divide by number of students. That give you cost per student. Then take another $5k off of that number because you are an undergrad and because it is much more expensive educating grad students. That right there tells you how much the education is worth yearly from the school's point of view. I am guess BU's real cost is around $30-35k per student. Not $49k.

 

[Fishy]

I have to take out nearly that max amount because my tuition this year costs $74k and I need some money for living expenses in an expensive city. Unfortunately I'm not from a wealthy family like a large group of my classmates so I have no other way to pay and don't get any financial support from family or anything. I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place, sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it at this cost.

It's not.

You're there, so it's too late, but a good state school would have saved you a fortune.

 

[beakumhawks]

At Kansas tuition went up quite a bit this year. This is due to an idiot governor who gave out tons of tax breaks to lure new business, which of course did not work. KU lost about $7m in funding from the state and is having to make lots of cuts in services.

 

[Kitaman]

I have to take out nearly that max amount because my tuition this year costs $74k and I need some money for living expenses in an expensive city. Unfortunately I'm not from a wealthy family like a large group of my classmates so I have no other way to pay and don't get any financial support from family or anything. I'm kind of between a rock and a hard place, sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it at this cost.

I know this doesn't help you or your situation, but hopefully it can be of use to someone else

 

[upstater]

I know this doesn't help you or your situation, but hopefully it can be of use to someone else

Student loans are a heavy burden. But it's not death. Look into IBR. If you enter that program, you can make sure that all your loans never rise above a certain % of your income. In other words, if you're taking out $70k over 4 years and somehow racking up $280k (holy cow), you enter IBR and pay only 10% of your salary (which, believe it or not, will be much much lower if you're earning, say, $70k) than servicing $280k with private lenders.

It's bad, but it's not the end of the world.

 

[BUConn10]

It's not.

You're there, so it's too late, but a good state school would have saved you a fortune.

If only it were that simple.

 

[Kitaman]

Student loans are a heavy burden. But it's not death. Look into IBR. If you enter that program, you can make sure that all your loans never rise above a certain % of your income. In other words, if you're taking out $70k over 4 years and somehow racking up $280k (holy cow), you enter IBR and pay only 10% of your salary (which, believe it or not, will be much much lower if you're earning, say, $70k) than servicing $280k with private lenders.

It's bad, but it's not the end of the world.

Thanks for this, I didn't know about this. But wouldn't the interest accrue greater (and consequently the total loan amount) when being paid over the longer period of time to repay? Like paying credit card minimum.

Also if/when the student is not employed how would that factor in this system?

Perhaps this is a lighter albatross but I have to do my research. Be nice if existing loans could be transferred though, allowing working grads (of all ages) to get a head start. Hell that alone makes the IBR seem worthwhile. It's not death your right, but that amount of debt on our kids is crazy.

 

[Paesano]

Well I started mid 80s, I am class of 1990.

Again, private schools can do whatever they want. They are private schools. No one has any control of them.

Cornell is also not hiring as many adjuncts. Why? Because it knows that people aren't paying 50k a year for to take courses with someone making $2,500 per course.

The math of need blind aid is simple to see. If the tuition was $20,000 years ago, and the cost per student was $12,000 (60% of $20k as per need-blind policy) the school effectively increasing tuition by $8k a year over what it spends. If you take the same dynamic and do it at $40k, then the school is charging you $16k more than it spends.

This is why need-blind admission jacks up tuition at these schools. The higher the tuition goes, the more you need to retain need-blind policies.

Plus, have you ever plugged in these figures into a CPI calculator?

$20k at 3% over 30 years = $48,500.

And if you're starting in 1986, you are looking at CPIs of 4.4, 4.4, 4.6, 6.1, 3.1, 2.9, 2.7, 2.7, 2.5, 3.3, for the first decade.

A much better study of college costs would be to look at spending over the last 30 years. How quickly has spending gone up?

The study I was just looking at showed spending at a school like Cal-Berkeley increased from $1.2B to $1.7B from 1991 to 2011 (20 years). I'd say that's probably lower than inflation.

Tuition at Berkeley is up over 1,000% during that period, well outpacing inflation. But costs aren't.

Your numbers still don't support your argument. If I understand your hypothetical correctly, everything doubles. Sure, the added cost to support need blind policies doubles but so did the real cost and the final total cost. It is not the same as actual cost doubling and total cost quadrupling, which is closer to what really happened from 1986 to 2016. In the real, non-hypothetical, scenario, the need-blind adder would have had to increase by way more than 4x. Unless you have data to back that up, I think there is more to this story and, based on some of the incredibly useless and misguided positions I have seen posted at some of the colleges in the Ithaca area, I am guessing they have something to do with it. There are "support" programs at colleges today that just didn't exist in 1986. There are academic departments today that just didn't exist back then either. If you add programs and departments but don't add students at the same rate, someone has to pay for it.

 

[upstater]

Your numbers still don't support your argument. If I understand your hypothetical correctly, everything doubles. Sure, the added cost to support need blind policies doubles but so did the real cost and the final total cost. It is not the same as actual cost doubling and total cost quadrupling, which is closer to what really happened from 1986 to 2016. In the real, non-hypothetical, scenario, the need-blind adder would have had to increase by way more than 4x. Unless you have data to back that up, I think there is more to this story and, based on some of the incredibly useless and misguided positions I have seen posted at some of the colleges in the Ithaca area, I am guessing they have something to do with it. There are "support" programs at colleges today that just didn't exist in 1986. There are academic departments today that just didn't exist back then either. If you add programs and departments but don't add students at the same rate, someone has to pay for it.

What departments are you talking about? Just wondering. Because I haven't seen anything knew in ages from the colleges I know. I have seen departments dropped at schools, like the Classics dept.

As for the numbers, I think they plainly support my argument. As tuition rises, the costs of need-blind go up by a imilar %. I think this is just basic math. If I started out at 1k tuition, I might be showing a 12000% increase over a decade in California--which far outpaces inflation. But if I were a private school like Stanford and went from $20k to $40k, my increase is 100%. But it doesn't change the fact that both Berkeley and Stanford spend the same amount of money per student. Stanford simply charges above the actual cost of the need blind policy, and as it sticks to its policy in the future, tuition can be expected to rise at a much faster pace than at Berkeley, unless of course Berkeley adopts similar policies (which publics have avoided doing in the past).

 

[upstater]

Thanks for this, I didn't know about this. But wouldn't the interest accrue greater (and consequently the total loan amount) when being paid over the longer period of time to repay? Like paying credit card minimum.

Also if/when the student is not employed how would that factor in this system?

Perhaps this is a lighter albatross but I have to do my research. Be nice if existing loans could be transferred though, allowing working grads (of all ages) to get a head start. Hell that alone makes the IBR seem worthwhile. It's not death your right, but that amount of debt on our kids is crazy.

I agree that having 10% of your salary axed is a killer. But that's the only salvation at this point.

IBR programs are for 20 years. If you pay 10% of salary for 20 years, the rest is discharged. If you are a school teacher in public schools, they will discharge after 10, and perhaps the same goes for Social Work, I am not sure.