Here's an interesting article on why college costs have been skyrocketing in recent years.

Why has college tuition been rising so high and fast? Will college costs ever drop back to more affordable levels?

Those questions have been frustrating parents and students for years. A new report provides some surprising answers that will, unfortunately, probably only frustrate and anger them even more. At public colleges, tuition has generally been driven up by rising spending on administrators, student support services, and the need to make up for reductions in government subsidies, according to a report issued by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, such as at community colleges (which educate about half of the nation's college students), tuition has risen while spending on classroom instruction has actually fallen. At public colleges especially, the current economic troubles will likely only accelerate the trend of rising prices and classroom cutbacks, says Jane Wellman, the author of the report. After analyzing income and spending statistics that nearly 2,000 colleges reported to the federal government, Wellman concludes: "Students are paying more and, arguably, getting less in the classroom."

There is one particularly interesting statistic that comes out of the article -- the one related to spending on administration. It seems that the a huge chunk of the spending is for non-classroom purposes like administration, maintenance, and "student services" -- $4000 a year, to the $8700 spent in the classroom. Knowing that colleges are like school districts, I know that there is plenty of room for cuts in one of those categories -- administration. For that matter, I wonder how much cutting could be made in "support services", much of which is fluff.

H/T The Glittering Eye

Posted by: Greg at 03:58 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 302 words, total size 2 kb.