A friend recently confided that she had no idea how she would pay for her son’s college tuition. He’s only 13, but she’s already worrying. She said that her working class parents were able to afford her tuition to NYU, but this year’s price tag for tuition and room and board exceeded her husband’s annual salary. Her son will never attend her alma mater.
Even though the rate of tuition increases slowed somewhat this year, college is not affordable for many families. People are getting smarter about what colleges they attend and forgoing dorm life. I think the era of six figure college loans is over, thanks to the media (and no thanks to the higher ed community). Even with a smarter college consumer, there are few options open to average kids with average financial means.
Colleges are in financial hot water. The states have drastically reduced funding for their public colleges. George Washington University is cutting corners by not admitting financially needy students. Smaller colleges, and even community colleges, are having trouble with enrollment numbers. I’m not sure where those students are going. University of Phoenix? Colleges are staying afloat by hiring temporary faculty at McDonald’s wages. At some schools, 70 percent of faculty are composed of these itinerant, semi-employed waifs.
Parents can’t afford college. Colleges can’t afford to operate.
What’s next?
Apt. 11d 
I was just freaking about this on Unfogged, and a number of people told me that there is a surprising amount of ‘merit’ aid out there for ordinary good students at very respectable even if not quite Ivy-levels of competitiveness schools, up to and including a free ride at colleges that aren’t the bottom of the barrel. I’m sure there wasn’t all that much of this in my era (HS class of ’88), but was told that there’s an awful lot now.
This doesn’t reassure me at all, even if it’s true, because there doesn’t seem to be any way to plan on that basis; the factors on which aid like this gets handed out seem pretty arbitrary, and could change arbitrarily from year to year. Leaving me with a fourteen and a twelve-year-old, still panicking.
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A lot of us are in the same boat, lizardbreath. We never saved for college tuition, because we needed to take care of our retirement savings. If GWU is like other schools, merit aid might not be around in another 4 years.
State colleges, even if they are being pinched, are still affordable. The problem with state colleges is that your kid is highly likely to have mostly adjuncts for the first couple of years of school. Adjuncts are often great teachers, but I do think that if I’m paying $25K for instate tuition and expenses, then I want the teachers to be paid properly.
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Not all state colleges are like this – you need to shop around. Are the big state flagship institutions like this? Probably, but many of us at directional universities (that all those nutjobs on the nasty political science board like to deride) are not at all. In my department, we have three faculty members who are not on the tenure track. Two of them have full-time gigs here that pay them over 50K per year. The other one is a local attorney who has been teaching a few classes a semester here for longer than I have been here – and we provide him with health insurance. This is not true in all departments here (I think every English department everywhere lives on cheap adjuncts), but it is true in many. If you know what to look for and look carefully, you can find some good state schools where your students will have great opportunities to work with full time faculty from day 1.
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At my rural directional university, we have very few adjuncts, except in English teaching comp (including a good friend who is a local and an amazing teacher), or as sabbatical replacements. And with bad job prospects for everyone, we’ve got a lot of smart people who are also good teachers. I’m not happy that the tuition/room and board total is nearing $20k/year here too (about half that is tuition) – but that’s because of decline in state funding.
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This is something I’ve decided not to worry about much at all. Part of it is that my children are still quite young and I’m saving my freaking out until they’re older but another part of it is that the situation seems so hopeless that even mild fretting doesn’t seem worth it. I imagine we’ll use a patched together system to cover the costs: student loans, parent loans, merit aid, savings, work study and all of us will come out the other end with a healthy amount of debt.
Or maybe they’ll decide to forego college altogether and go to tech school or something. That option is becoming increasingly appealing.
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And my number one agreed with me yest when I told him I think he wants to be one of the guys in the stands with the school colors painted on his bare chest and face, and he has no idea under God’s heaven what he wants to study. I should pay $30000 a year for this?!
There is a bundle of services which have in the past come from colleges: your kid actually learns something. Your kid gets social polish by being around others whose values are middle class and prudent and positive. The polity is enriched by thoughtful stuff being published by the professors. Social mobility is enabled when kids from lower income quintiles get the same education and polish as kids from upper quintiles. You drink clean water, because the local utility can hire somebody who knows how to run a purification plant. And my kid gets to paint his chest in the school colors and play beer pong and have fond memories as he goes forward in a plausible middle class job, which he got because of his degree and for which skills from college are one hopes useful.
And all of those things useta be bundled together and paid for at an affordable rate by parents of top-three-quintile incomes through their tuition.
Now it’s not affordable, and you have to decide whether you can really stand to decimate your retirement funds for some other parents’ kids’ scholarships and yet another impenetrable Foucalt paper getting published and your kids’ fond beer pong memories. I expect unbundling! of these services. I know I don’t want to pay for the Foucalt papers.
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If Laura’s friend’s total family income is actually below $50,000 (the OP doesn’t mention the wife’s income, only the husband’s), then her children would qualify for a fair amount of need-based aid, as well as merit-based aid. Indeed, as I recall, there would be no tuition at all at HYP.
That said, I would certainly recommend a 529 plan in addition to a 401(k).
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Apprenticeship with Uncle Dave (or equivalent)? What’s what my nieces & nephews are doing.
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NYU’s tuition plus room and board and expenses = $64K http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=436
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Of course, my fourteen-year-old wants to be a beekeeper these days, so that’d simplify matters.
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You fourteen-year-old will probably need to marry into a beekeeping family, then. Be on the lookout!
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One of my highschool classmates actually did that, although not with the aim of beekeeping. His bride was a beekeeper/blacksmith.
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Assuming the bees are still around in 5 to 10 years. Ecological collapse, just one more fun thing to worry about for our children’s futures.
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That’s awesome.
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“Adjuncts are often great teachers, but I do think that if I’m paying $25K for in-state tuition and expenses, then I want the teachers to be paid properly.”
The situation sucks mightily, but the adjuncts teaching my oldest at a public university are fantastic – much better than the tenured professors I had at a small liberal arts school. He got no aid at all until this year when we finally had two in college.
My youngest was recruited by a school in the $55k plus range but was given enough merit aid to bring the cost within a few thousand of a public university. More great teaching, but the whole place is an UMC mecca. Diversity is a joke.
So all in all, we are paying about $40k for two and it’s a great deal and it’s killing us. I have no answers.
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The view about the 50K/year is that parents & students are expected to pay for NYU based on past, current, and future income. I wonder how such a budget would look? If it also includes the other necessities (housing, health care, retirement, childcare)?
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The sallie mae report: https://salliemae.newshq.businesswire.com/sites/salliemae.newshq.businesswire.com/files/doc_library/file/Sallie_Mae_Report_-_How_America_Pays_for_College_Report_FINAL_0.pdf
Interesting, though of course no one is average.
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“Ms. Koehler confirmed that only the description of the policy had shifted. “The university’s admissions practices have not changed with regard to how financial-aid requests are factored in,” she said. “What has changed is the new leadership in enrollment management. What we are trying to do is increase the transparency of the admissions process.””
What ugly double-speak (from the GW article). After reporting from a school newspaper, the university changes the lies on its web page, and then says that the previous lying and the fix of the lying is “new leadership in enrollment management.”
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Read the college newspaper article for the uglier version of the story: http://www.gwhatchet.com/2013/10/21/gw-misrepresented-admissions-and-financial-aid-policy-for-years/, which includes a continuing misleading of students at current information sessions.
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You must look for a college’s “net price,” not its published full-pay rate. For NYU: http://www.nyu.edu/admissions/financial-aid-and-scholarships/financial-aid-calculator.html
The further your child is willing to go, with good test scores, the better the merit offers may be.
Research “college discount rate” for more articles on this point.
The overall discount rate for all undergraduate students at the institutions surveyed also grew in 2012 to a new high of almost 40 percent.
According to the survey, 86.9 percent of first-time, full-time freshmen in 2012 received some form of institutional aid, with the average award amount equal to 53.1 percent of the sticker price. Those numbers dropped slightly as students progressed through school. Students at small institutions were more likely to receive awards than were their peers at other institutions, but students at research universities were more likely to receive larger awards.
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/07/nacubo-survey-reports-sixth-consecutive-year-discount-rate-increases#ixzz2iZZu30zB
Inside Higher Ed
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Mom of a high school senior here — It feels a bit like we are auctioning off the little darling to the highest bidder. It’s a bit strange. He and his friends all feel as though they are being auctioned off — also very strange. Nobody has any idea where in the country they will end up or if it will be at a school that anyone has ever heard of.
We have a decent income now, so of course we are expected to have piles of money sitting around, just waiting to pay tuition. (Fordham is 64,000 a year — but it’s OK! Because they sent us a postcard telling us that they’re going to waive the forty dollar application fee! So actually it’s only 63,960! Yes, we will definitely be availing ourselves of that application fee waiver — because we’re thrifty! No, actually we won’t.)
The price calculators don’t actually take into account the fact that I was an adjunct until 2009; that we are a military family who didn’t settle down until 2005 — allowing us to buy our house at the very PEAK of housing prices, mind you; The fact that my current job comes with NO pension, the fact that my husband was furloughed last year in his government job. Not reflected.
I can’t afford to send my kids to my alma mater either, and I feel a little bit bad for the alma mater undergrad who called me during the recent fund drive to suggest I might like to donate to pay somebody else’s kids tuition — I’m afraid I put her on speaker so that my husband, and my son, and I could all laugh and explain why that donation wasn’t going to be forthcoming.
On the other hand, our child has already been offered scholarships at two OK schools in our area, and is being flown out at the university’s expense to take a look at a third school. It stinks that our kid will have no idea where he is going until he finds out which of the 14 schools he is applying to have accepted him AND finds out what they’re offering AND has my husband call the various places to negotiate as though said child is actually a slightly beat up used car that has only been driven to church on Sundays by a little old lady. (What else are you willing to throw in? How about if you give us the tuition and the AC and the stereo?)
I think the only upside is that at the end of the “auction”, you have a kid who is much more financially savvy and who understands the way the world works. All of my kid’s friends know exactly how much their family has for college, the prices of all the schools they are willing to consider and why they won’t be majoring in something useless. (I don’t think I was even aware of what the tuition was at my alma mater back when I attended. My dad wrote the checks and kept me in the dark. I’m not sure that being clueless about money actually served me well in the long-run).
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So, I will share with you all our college expenses. Geeky Boy is at a state school. Total cost: ~$20k–that’s tuition, room & board. Mr. Geeky’s school pays 1/2 tuition, so that knocked off about $6.5k. That left $14k out of pocket. I’d saved about $6k that. Now down to $9k. Geeky Boy took out a loan for about $5k. Down to about $4k out of pocket, which we pay monthly. They charge by the semester, so it’s $2k per semester. It’s doable, though I’ll admit it’s hard. Also, you have to account for spending money, books, all the stuff to buy to live in the dorm — and we were frugal here — it’s a lot.
Had we been able to save more than the measly $6k, things things would have been pretty good. But two grad student salaries, student loan debt, and generally getting a late start on making real money meant not much saving. Or saving and then having to spend it on things like car repairs. My dream is not feel like I’m scraping by all the time.
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Thanks for the nuts and bolts breakdown GeekyMom!
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We’ll be in the same boat. We might look good on paper, but add in a late start to earning, a late start to saving for retirement, a late start to home ownership, and our own student loan debts means we’ll have very little money to throw at the kid for college AND he won’t qualify for need-based aid. Even public schools will hurt.
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I know a lot of people who’re envious of our lower tuition levels here in Canada. That gap was noticeable where I first came to Canada in the 80s but it’s become a gaping gulf since. As a Canadian at an Ontario university, Eldest faces a relatively modest tuition by U.S. standards.
When Eldest opted not to attend my institution and forego the tuition waver plus healthy scholarship money *sniff*, we were still able to swing the costs to send her to her first choice university and put her up in residence between the savings and some grandparental contributions since these are the only grandkids on both sides of the family. She’d originally toyed with applying to some US institutions but did the math and announced that she thought it was a crazy waste of money. Thank goodness she saw it that way and we didn’t have to wheel and deal with a U.S. tuition system!
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One of my Canadian connections spent 7 years in college changing schools and changing programs and living largely in the Toronto area in an apartment (she said she was distracted in the dorms). It was horrifically expensive for her parents.
I think just the cost of living outside the family home has to be accounted for in these discussions. Tuition is not the only thing going on–the kid is also eating and living some place.
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I agree that the costs of living away from home have to be taken into consideration. Those lovely sample budgets and cost plans that universities circulate make it seem easy but we all know that then you need to add in all sorts of extras. Those costs can go through the roof when you talk about off-campus living in the big cities or expensive communities.
Eldest knows that if she wants to live off-campus, she’s going to have to live with relatives way out on the GO line and then have to factor in long commutes. That, we hope, will keep her focused on the joys of residence (which, honestly, she quite loves – she has a gorgeous few of the downtown skyline from her room, lucky duck).
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The Chronicle recently had a disturbing article about public schools using the money they have available for scholarships to woo the wealthy rather than help the poor.
http://chronicle.com/article/Public-Colleges-Quest-for/141541/
In it, a student from a single parent household whose mother is on disability earning $700 a month, and who thrived despite that obstacle and had an excellent GPA in high school, could not get enough grants and loans to attend ANY 4 year college. That’s because the public universities in PA are increasingly expensive due to drastically decreasing state support and because they give virtually no need-based aid (the state has a grant program, but that plus Pell grants is just not enough for any school anywhere in the state).
Meanwhile, the state schools and the state relateds in PA give tons of merit aid, most of it going to students whose families are wealthy enough to afford the tuition. This is because those state schools want to improve their rankings. They also give a little bit of aid to a lot of people to encourage them to come–a discount intended to get money from these students who might go elsewhere–rather than a lot of aid to the few people who cannot attend college without it. Even if they are highly motivated like the young woman in the article. (She could not get merit aid because her test scores, which are highly correlated with family income, were not high enough).
After reading this article, I decided to check out the merit aid at Temple–a nearby state related–and found lo and behold that my daughter is currently on track to get a excellent merit-based scholarship there. Students with a certain GPA–which she has–and certain test scores (not taken yet), can get incredible discounts, including, at the top end, a entirely free ride with summer stipends to do internships. This is automatic if you have the GPA and the test scores. We could afford to send her to Temple, not least because of money set aside by my in laws, which we are forever thankful for. But why would we, if we can do it free? It’s a complete disgrace. The wealthier are being pitted against the poor–who’s going to win that exchange?
I’ve decided that if my children do get significant discounts and we end up with money left over (doubtful since we have three, but you never know), I will endow a needs-based scholarship at a PA state school that must be used to assist a student who would not otherwise be able to attend- a gap scholarship, I think they call it. If I ever win the lottery, I promise no dollar will go to any university that is not intended for needs-based support. But still–if any of my kids do get this sort of aid, I will feel guilty–it will be subsidizing the opportunities of my other children to attend a more elite school, or subsidizing a downpayment for my kids on their first houses, or ultimately subsidizing my grandchildren’s education–all the things I’ve learned the wealthier do since marrying into a wealthier family. And it’s one reason there is so little social mobility.
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A gap scholarship seems like an excellent idea – I had been thinking about giving money to my own school for just that purpose, and I’m glad to know it’s an actual thing, with a name.
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FYI–Temple is where Geeky Boy ended up. Loves it. He didn’t qualify for merit aid, but it’s more affordable than out of state.
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Husband’s alma mater is Temple, and he’s earning some damn fine money as are most of his friends who are now 15 years out. I’m fairly impressed with the small sample of Temple grads I’ve met.
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Some of our students’ parents are Temple grads and they’re paying full tuition at our school–so, doing well. 🙂
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Great to see all the Temple love! I should come clean–I’m actually a grad school alum from Temple myself. My husband and I met there and both received our PhDs there. And we both graduated debt-free, too!
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Notice a common theme here: reduced state support for public universities. This is directly related to the short-sighted fiscal irresponsibility of Republicans at both state and and national levels. In the higher education boom after WWII, public universities were key in providing opportunities for lower income and first generation students. Without sufficient state support they cannot do that anymore. This contributes to growing economic inequality and, since it is a direct result of the ideology and policies of the Republican Party, it is what Republican want. They will reject that last assertion, but it seems a rather clear conclusion.
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It’s not “the Republicans.” It’s “State politicians, no matter their party.” The states are required to run balanced budgets.
Our state’s been firmly in the control of Democrats for decades, and support for our state universities has been cut over time.
This is an in-depth report on the national trends, with charts listing cuts by state: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3927
I suspect the shift away from supporting universities, and toward supporting programs which benefit the old reflects the Baby Boomers’ ageing and retirement. They are, and always have been, a powerful force in politics.
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Sorry, but my own alma mater (Berkeley) has had declining state support for years. So the claim that it’s the fault of Republicans is just silly.
While you’re at it, why don’t you explain how the bankruptcy of Detroit is the fault of the Republicans?
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Yes, it’s complex. But decades of tax-cutting hysteria has culminated in untenable budgets now. Remember Proposition 13 in CA? It began a cascading series of effects that undermined funding for, first, community colleges and, ultimately, the UC system:
“Over the years, Proposition 13 has constructed a fiscal system that made the UC especially vulnerable to slashes from the state in the last 15 years, Young said.
Local governments and school districts, which relied on property taxes for funding before Proposition 13 capped this source of revenue, became more dependent on the state’s money, Young said.
“Large sections of what was available for the UC, prisons, welfare had to be set aside to fund public schools and other programs that could no longer be funded by local governments,” Young said.
http://dailybruin.com/2012/01/11/former_ucla_chancellor_charles_young_files_lawsuit_to_overturn_proposition_13/
Same in Democratic friendly Massachusetts, with our Proposition 21/2, which limits tax increases.
Now, we can argue about whether property taxes are the best way to fund public education. I personally think not. But it is clear that these kinds of initiatives were historically championed by Republicans and have shaped political and fiscal outcomes for decades. But alternative sources of revenue – income tax, consumption tax – are politically unfeasible, because why?….
Bottom line, taxes are the price we pay for civilized society. Republicans are the primary political obstacle to a more rational and effective and fair tax system. In the meantime, public services of all sorts, education included, are weakened. Democrats may be weak on these issues, too, but Republicans are framing the debate and driving policy outcomes…
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Massachusetts property taxes are assessed by towns, not the state. State contributions to Public university budgets have nothing to do with prop 2 1/2. (and ed reform changed the funding formula for public school systems)
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And remember the rhetorical posturing of last year’s presidential campaign:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-is-the-gop-suddenly-turning-against-college/254337/
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As Sam, says, the theme of public universities is the underlying story here. Public universities used to be affordable, because they were subsidized. And, I do blame the dysfunctional tax system in states as being an underlying cause of the decline in support for the state university (Prop 13, yes, initiatives in WA state).
Cranberry’s list is an interesting one — It’s interesting to see NC, NY, MA, NE, IN on the list of schools that have cut their university system’s less than WA, MA, MI, OH. The first question I’d want to ask is what the level of support was in the different states. But, I do know that NC consistently appears on lists of schools that still support their university systems.
One might explain MA’s decreasing support as a function of the availability of universities in MA (as opposed to NE & IN). WA & OH share a characteristic of being just below the “best public university ranking” in the past with hopes of moving into the same class of U of M & UC.
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There is a relationship between reduced property taxes and reduced higher public education funding in Massachusetts. Towns and localities lose their revue-raising capacity and then appeal to the state to off set the effects. Those appeals then compete against other state-level spending requests, including higher education. Smaller pie (because local level taxes are limited) + larger demand => pressure against public higher education budgets.
The broad dynamics are described here:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=301
“By limiting Massachusetts localities’ only major source of revenue, Proposition 2 ½ has exacted a considerable cost — one that highlights the shortcomings of property tax revenue caps as a policy approach. The law has:
– arbitrarily constrained local governments’ ability to raise revenues without any consideration of the actual cost of providing services;
– made local governments heavily dependent on state aid, which tends to fluctuate with economic cycles and state policies (a particular problem in an economic downturn when state aid usually declines but the need for local services such as education and fire and police protection does not decline);…”
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I was just looking at a chart showing US State Government Spending from FY 1900 to FY 2018. As I expected, the trend of state spending has been (with dips here and there) up and up for over a hundred years.
“At the start of the 20th century state government spending was the smallest component of government, expending less than one percent of GDP each year. But state government spending has steadily increased throughout the 20th century. It went over 1 percent of GDP in the 1920s and exploded to 3 percent of GDP in the 1930s. In the 1950s state government began a steady growth, from 3 percent of GDP in the early 1950s to over 8 percent of GDP by 2000.”
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/state_spending_chart
State spending has been going up and up. If state spending on public universities is going down, it’s because the money is being spent on other things, rather than that the states don’t have money period.
There’s another chart showing local, state and federal spending over the same period. Here’s the blurb for it:
“At the start of the 20th century, government spending was principally local government spending. Out of a total of 7 percent of GDP, a full 4 percent was spent at the local level. Federal spending spiked in World War I, but in the 1920s, local government still represented about half of all government spending. In the 1930s this changed, and federal spending surged to about half of all government spending. After the spike of World War II the federal share increased again and state government spending also began to increase as a percent of GDP, so that by the 2010s federal spending checked in at over 20 percent of GDP, state spending amounted to 8 to 9 percent of GDP and local spending exceeded 10 percent of GDP.”
What if the story of US government spending is that as the states and the feds suck up more and more money, there’s less and less available directly to local governments?
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State universities are subsidized from state taxes – which are in many cases among the more regressive ways to get public money. So you have a janitor whose children stopped after high school paying taxes to lower the cost of college for the child of a middle school principal. Is this a good thing? Better to try and lower the cost of college itself I think – cut back on the climbing walls and sushi bars, maybe build the dorms out of concrete block. You maybe don’t need (as at my alma mater, Berkeley) a huge and expensive ‘diversity’ administration.
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“Better to try and lower the cost of college itself I think – cut back on the climbing walls and sushi bars, maybe build the dorms out of concrete block. ”
This is why I have always argued that privatizing K-12 education is a bad idea. Once you start having to *attract* customers, you end up with the climbing walls and sushi bars.
Speaking of concrete block dorms, when I was at Cornell, I lived in the U-Halls (concrete block dorms) for 1.5 years (driven out mid-sophomore year by neighbors who insisted on playing Chaka Khan’s “I Feel For You” at random times of the day and night). Over the past 10 years, they’ve taken down the U-Halls and put up fancy new dorms, and it makes me so sad. 😦
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When I was in college, there was one semester where every morning I would put on Blondie’s “Eat to the Beat” and crank it up loud enough that I could hear it while taking a shower in the bathroom at the other end of the hall. No one moved out, but one of my hallmates did ask, wearily, whether I would ever get tired of the album (which I did, but not until the next semester).
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My freshman year, some of my floormates would, at random times, crank up Copacabana and dance in the hallway.
Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
And while she tried to be a star
Tony always tended bar
I seem to recall that Simon and Garfunkel’s Cecilia was another favorite.
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“State universities are subsidized from state taxes – which are in many cases among the more regressive ways to get public money”
So, we should go for the short-lived bid from the chancellors at University of California that the state universities should be supported by federal funds?
People make theoretical arguments about janitors funding the education of the middle-class kid at a state university, but I find the statistical evidence that janitors’ children are more likely to have access to the university if it is funded by a broader base of taxpayers in the state pretty strong.
State funding also decreases the need to attract customers at full price, and is thus more likely to result in a decrease of sushi bars (in their defense, climbing walls are really cheap, if they are built on walls that are already there). I believe there was an article we linked to that did that analysis, too — showing that students weighted amenities like hot tubs in college decision making quite strongly, compared to, say the quality of the instruction (not surprisingly, since hot tubs are easy to see and enjoy while the quality of instruction is difficult to see and measure). The article went further and argued that for mediocre students, the quality or rigor of instruction might actually be a negative, since they wouldn’t be able to enjoy it, while the hot tub would be an immediately rewarding experience.
So state funding might well revers a number of these trends.
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The Ride of the Valkyrie, at my institution, played at high volume with souped up speakers built by tech geeks, including one that many have heard of because he became a well-known venture capitalist), every morning at 7 AM during finals week.
For years I couldn’t hear it without shivering with Pavlovian reactions, but I think I have now recovered (extinguished the conditioned learning).
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bj,
That is awesome.
I have a similar Pavlovian response to Baker Street, because it’s the intro music for the Dave Ramsey show. If I happen to be in a store shopping when Baker Street comes on the in-store music, my desire to shop suddenly shrivels. I’ve heard other DR listeners have the same issue.
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Turning this conversation into a new blog post…
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This professor blames technology and the increasing worldwide demand for educated workers for the rising cost of college: http://www.nasfaa.org/advocacy/perspectives/articles/Myths_and_Realities_about_Rising_College_Tuition.aspx
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And I’m happy to pay for similar conditioning for my children, as we’ll as long late night conversations about the meaning of life, all-nighters on homework sets (or papers, since her interests run in that direction), and the opportunity to hang out with the occasional Nobel laureate and tech geeks who turn into famous guys (or bit players in sitcoms). And to pay for the smart student who can’t afford to pay (which I was, unlike my equally smart kids who can afford to pay).
Less enthused about paying for junior years abroad, sushi, or hot tubs.
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Don’t knock junior years abroad. The funny thing is, some of them are cheaper than the home institution. In fact, locally, it was rather controversial when the college decided to start charging normal tuition for study abroad.
I do wonder about the study abroads that are drink-beer-in-English-speaking-country or drink-beer-while-taking-English-language-courses–lame! I personally did spring 1994 in St. Petersburg Russia, and all our courses were in Russian and we had Russian roommates. (Theoretically, we were only supposed to speak Russian to each other, but that did not happen.) I learned a lot in those four months that I would have had no way of learning in the US. That, along with a Russian-speaking boyfriend my senior year, set me up very well for my Peace Corps service.
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I didn’t read it, but the ny times had an article complaining about the junior year abroad hype as being a prime example of the amenities race. I think there are a lot of bad programs out there, in the sense of providing learning value, though I do not want to ignore the value of just living in a different country as a learning experience.
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There is at least one study which suggests that campus amenities such as sushi bars and climbing walls do not draw high-achievers to campus: http://www.affordableschoolsonline.com/elite-students-look-at-college-reputation-before-amenities/.
Whether they need aid or not, both groups of students placed greater importance on a college’s reputation.
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The study underlying that link: http://www.aefpweb.org/sites/default/files/webform/GriffithRaskCollegeChoice030113.pdf
Argues that “prestige” plays the biggest role in decision making (over both academic and non-academic amenities), which I think doesn’t argue against the original premise that angling to attract students doesn’t result in the wisest investments by colleges (in this case, potentially battling in prestige rankings, by, say, lying about the SAT averages of incoming students).
The cite for the alternative point of view, that non-academic amenites play a significant role is http://www-personal.umich.edu/~kstange/JacobMcCallStangeConsValue2013.pdf. In that article, the authors argue that everyone wants amenities, while high-achieving students also care about academic quality.
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Amenities are pretty much the whole point of campus tours. It’s not like the tour guides stop to point out the most eloquent and erudite English literature professor.
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I disagree. Amenities are as much a turn-off as an attraction.
What an institution chooses to highlight (or not mention) on a tour is very illuminating.
One college began the tour at their renovated football stadium. (Zap–off our list.)
One college tour highlighted the climbing wall. The campus was beautiful. (Zap. The culture seemed more sporty than academic.)
One campus was pristine. (Zap–child said it was “too perfect. It’s creepy.”)
Many mothers on tours seem to believe their sons will starve to death if food is not available from 6 am to 12 am. Thus, tours often include remodeled food courts. Delivery service is emphasized, if offered. I have not noticed a significant death rate from starvation in college freshmen. Most figure out how to dial out for pizza, or lay in stocks of junk food. And there’s always beer. (Which is illegal, of course.)
The most elite universities we toured did not include dorms or dining halls on the tour. That’s o.k., because you don’t attend those schools for the country club atmosphere.
Today’s students love tradition; I don’t know if all the money put into dorms is well-spent, as they like a traditional atmosphere. Wifi connections, great. Modern design in the dorms? Perhaps not such a selling point.
You’d better hope your tour guide talks about the academic atmosphere, about the library resources, and the inspiring connections she has made with peers and professors. We have lots of tour guide stories. Bubbly sorority-types did not make colleges more interesting to my eldest; at best, they might be dismissed with, “well, she was sweet, but not that sharp.”
A tour is a good time to ask questions which are not covered in the official info session, such as:
do recruited athletes get preferential treatment?
do all students have equal access to facilities and classes?
when do students have access to seminars?
how many students participate in Greek life?
does the campus empty out on weekends?
is the library collection adequate? are the stacks open, or must you request materials?
what’s the student culture like? If you aren’t a football, basketball, or hockey fan (varies by institution), what’s social life like?
can you start your own clubs?
does the campus email system work?
are students likely to transfer in, or transfer out?
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We toured a boarding school last summer. The tour guide was 16 or 17. On hearing that our kid liked basketball, he immediately took us to the weight room. Then we saw the gym and the 17 tennis courts (or something like that). We were starting to get worried, but then we saw the science building (a humpback skeleton in the main lobby! scavenged by the students!) and the library (fabulous). So, the first thing we saw did not zap the school off our list.
But, ultimately, we did only see amenities (the beauty of the library & the skeleton are amenities, not necessarily educational opportunities). My kid would have loved to see how the classes work in session, but that’s hard to do over the summer.
Thinking on your list of questions, I think what the list ignores is whether one falls into the privileged category. I might eliminate a school because too high a percent of students participate in the Greek system (though, then, what do we do at a school where everyone participates in a pseudo-greek house system?), but others might consider it a plus. Having equal access to classes might be a good thing at one university, but a bad thing for the honors student who might have special access at another university (well, making individual decisions).
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We have also visited that boarding school. You would have an opportunity to observe classes at Revisit, but generally not before. It would be too disruptive. In the end, we were not wowed by what we observed. The same method is used in other schools. If you’d like one impression of the method, you should read, _The Best of the Best_, by Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández. He points out that a pecking order establishes itself in the classroom.
Amenities do reveal the school’s nature. One school has a large library. Another has sold or given away most of the books, but has a cappucino bar in the space.
If you’re an honors student, it would influence how you feel about the presence of an honors college. On the other hand, acceptance to an honors program is not guaranteed; kids are sometimes surprised by their placement.
House systems, or eating clubs, or similar social divisions, can influence decisions too. Do you want the student body divided into selective, exclusive groups? My eldest didn’t, and I agree with her. It’s fine to have clubs, but if it’s hard to find people who aren’t in Greek life, that structures social life.
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