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Where is all this tuition even going to? Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia and yet these colleges are also

Where is all this tuition even going to? Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia and yet these colleges are also systematically underpaying PhD students, Teaching Assistants, etc. College Professors don't exactly make the big bucks either. Yet, universities in the US have made put many Americans in lifelong debt. These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant tax benefits), so where is the money even going?

renewiltord 4y ago
These places are primarily admin staff with a small teaching department.
johnebgd 4y ago
Middle management/admin salaries.
twistedpair 4y ago
Ever seen Football coach, and college president salaries? For state colleges, they're often some of the highest paid employees in the state. [1] 1. https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo-swinney-ed-orgeron-highest-paid-state-employees https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo-s...
- dgfitz 4y ago
  The vast majority of coaches don't make this kind of money. I refuse to believe tuition is insanely high because of coaching salaries. I was actually under the (possibly incorrect) assumption that coaches salaries come largely from boosters and things like ticket sales, jersey sales, etc.
  - twistedpair 4y ago
    Here's some real data for you, in a NY college no less. President of my undergrad college made $884K last year [1], but a medical school professor made nearly $2M. 1. https://nonprofitlight.com/ny/rochester/university-of-rochester https://nonprofitlight.com/ny/rochester/university-of-roches...
    - mikkergp 4y ago
      They're a professor for Orthopedics. Orthopedics is the highest paid specialty and at a university, Professor == Physician. Point is he's making that money for the hospital for patient services, not because of his teaching.
    - temp8964 4y ago
      Medical schools usually have separated funding sources too. Many professors are in fact practicing medicine in their field.
- Cerealkiller050 4y ago
  Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a bargain. Not only that, for most universities college football (some men's basketball) cover all the other men's and women's sports that hemorrhage money.
  - leothecool 4y ago
    Coach salaries -would- look like a bargain if revenue correlated with win-loss rate or quite frankly any measurable activity the coaches do. But, they don't. IMO the guy in big-10 football who deserves a multi million dollar salary is the guy in the mascot fursuit.
  - mbesto 4y ago
    > Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a bargain. Now do this analysis while paying student-athletes salaries and tell me if the coaches are bargain.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    I, too, can run a sports team profitably if I don't have to pay my players.
- throwawayboise 4y ago
  Athletics is normally (always?) a separate self-funding enterprise attached to th e university. Tutition dollars don't pay the coaches; alumni donations/gifts, sponsors, and ticket sales do.
- temp8964 4y ago
  No. Football coaches don’t get salary from tuitions. Athletic department has separated funding sources.
  - danaris 4y ago
    This may be true for some colleges and universities, but certainly isn't universally so.
RaoulP 4y ago
I'm curious about this too, in my mind it doesn't add up at all.
tombert 4y ago
To be fair, if you graduate in four years, and are alright with state universities or community colleges, and major in some kind of field that allows you to be an engineer, university doesn't have to put you in lifelong debt. Many students do community college for the first two years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the order of ~$30,000 of debt. That's a lot of money, but generally not a life-ruining amount for an engineer. That's not even counting the weird universities like WGU, where you can get a bachelors for less than ~$15,000 without too much trouble.
- BeetleB 4y ago
  > Many students do community college for the first two years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the order of ~$30,000 of debt. For people in many European countries, this is an absurd amount of debt to get a university degree. Edit: For context: About 20 years ago, my university's annual fees was $15000/year for out of state students, and $4600 for in state - in today's dollars. Now that university charges $28K for out of state and $8.3K for in state - almost doubled after accounting for inflation. In other nearby universities I see people paying $15K/year for in state. This is a huge increase in two decades.
  - tombert 4y ago
    That's entirely fair, I'm a big proponent of making colleges either free, or extremely heavily subsidized by the government. I completely agree that it's still ridiculous to leave with $30,000 of debt. I'm just saying that, for someone working an engineering job, that is not generally a life-ruining amount of money, especially in comparison to the increased earning potential that a degree affords you (which is, I suspect, why they get away with charging such exorbitant tuition in the first place).
    - Dma54rhs 4y ago
      Are dormitories / living expenses included in those American debt numbers or you take them as separate?
hirako2000 4y ago
Most of it goes to academic instruction expenses, and operations. The fast growing expense is more likely the latter as administrations have rather grown in size per student. Land appreciates in value too, even if the universities may own campuses, it remains in the balance sheets. Research is also a cost, even though they some of it back, they aren't VCs so this can bleed money there as well, and pretty fast, especially for underperforming institutions. I'm shocked shocked by the tuition fees in the U.S. But comparing with India and even Europe is a bit silly since those places don't compare in term of university ranking and average income level. Those professors/researchers are packed with long years of studies plus a loan they had accumulated themselves so it's a bit like a positive feedback loop.
prepend 4y ago
> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in this country. There’s no sufficient governance or oversight in controlling university spending. This is even a public university and it’s just bizarre that they can make up positions that shouldn’t even exist.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.
  - muh_gradle 4y ago
    Administrative bloat in higher education is well known at this point, and it's absolutely a part of where student money is going. All I see is a lot of "mights" in your post.
  - didericis 4y ago
    > Even if they don’t bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus Or it might not. Thats the root of the problem. The administrators are the people coming up with the metrics and arguments to justify their own existence. I’m sure many of them believe they’re making a positive contribution, and the situation is more complex and tragic than just “these are the baddies” type arguments suggest, but there’s still an accountability problem that needs to be reckoned with.
  - evolve2k 4y ago
    I also reject the assertion they shouldn’t exist. The “Alumni network” is listed as one of the additional benefits when enrolling for a degree. Further when the engineering firm you started after graduation with some of your classmates wines a National science award. Getting that profiled in the alumni newsletter could be unlocking a range of oppprtunities for your firm from grant funder interest to new commercialisation opportunity, all coming out of the alumni network. Just cause the work is quiet doesn’t mean it’s pointless.
mysterydip 4y ago
I worked at a small private college for a few years in IT. Tuition increased every year, yet our budget always seemed to be the same or smaller ("we need to do more with less"), and my salary certainly didn't get proportionately larger.
eunos 4y ago
Student services in US universities are massive coupled with salaries for coterie of admins, deans and middle-men.
BeetleB 4y ago
Typical culprits: - Too much admin per student compared to 40 years ago - (Much more likely): Severe decline in funds from the state. I know at least one nearby university that showed the data that the increase in tuition from 1980 to 2010 was almost entirely due to government cuts, and that the budget spending per student hadn't changed in that time frame - adjusted for inflation. - Fancy buildings
- musicale 4y ago
  > - (Much more likely): Severe decline in funds from the state. I know at least one nearby university that showed the data that the increase in tuition from 1980 to 2010 was almost entirely due to government cuts, and that the budget spending per student hadn't changed in that time frame - adjusted for inflation This may be a good explanation for public institutions, but what is the justification for private institutions? For example, a year at the University of Pennsylvania (a private university) in 1980 cost about $7200 (equivalent to $25K today), but Penn currently charges about $75K per year. What is the justification for the additional tripling of charges, even after adjusting for inflation?
tyoma 4y ago
We don’t have to guess. Most US universities are public institutions so you can just Google up their budget. As an example, here is the UC system: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4511 https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4511 https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2021/chapters/chapter-6.html https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2021/chapt... About 70% of the UC budget goes to salaries and benefits. Of that, 70% of staff is non-academic. Full context below: Non-academic staff employees constitute nearly 70 percent of UC’s workforce and are responsible for health services, student services, instruction and research support, compliance, and general administration (6.1.1). In October 2020, this group included 143,188 individuals. Overall, this staff workforce represented over 115,577 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees in that month. STAFF WORKFORCE About six out of every ten UC staff FTE are working for the University of California Health system. These frontline workers (including doctors, nurses, administrators, technicians, and allied health professionals) are playing a critical role in California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 97 percent of these employees are supported by non-core funds, typically the revenues generated by hospital services. Students often work part-time on campus as part of their financial aid packages or for research experience. During the pandemic, UC campuses transitioned to remote instruction. With staff, faculty, and students no longer on campus, student employee headcount at general campus halved from 36,000 in October 2019 to 18,000 in October 2020. General campus, non-student employees are the remainder of the University’s staff, at 43,752 FTE. This includes student services employees, career advisors, IT specialists, research administration, laboratory staff, food and auxiliary service workers, accountants, maintenance and janitorial staff, safety workers, and analysts (6.1.1).
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  So 40% of employees aren't paid by the university system's academic arm, but by the healthcare section. 30% are academic staff, and 30% are support staff.
  - daxfohl 4y ago
    Even with the cost of medicine going through the roof, college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average. So it's surprising the university would need to spend so much there.
haakonhr 4y ago
I don't think it is fair to compare with Europe. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as an example, got around 1b USD over the national budget. Stipends and loans to students are provided by another governmental body (Lånekassen), but in the US some students get a "full ride" (incl. accommodation and so on). However, the amount of debt you hear some americans ending up with is crazy.
- RaoulP 4y ago
  Just to add to that - Students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology do not pay tuition fees. So the stipend and loan provided by Lånekassen go mainly to living expenses.
throwawayboise 4y ago
> Where is all this tuition even going to? Administrative staff, which has ballooned over the past several decades. Many of these people have mediocre ability, don't really do much, but once a position is created it is hardly ever eliminated. Buildings and renovations. Ever seen a modern student dorm? They are luxurious compared to what they were in the 1980s. It's a constant competitive war as students will actually choose a school based on the living accomodations over the education. Programs to assist students who should really not be there, and other programs that don't seem to recognize that college students are adults and should be expected to manage their lives by themselves. Do they really need the university to arrange coloring book time to help with the stress of mid-terms?
- delaynomore 4y ago
  >Many of these people have mediocre ability Perhaps. University never intends to compete for top talent with their salary offerings. I recall during a salary discussion years ago, my manager at the time mentioned that the salary was indeed below market but offered up the point below as an advantage. >don't really do much, but once a position is created it is hardly ever eliminated. Yup. This was true and was a definitely a benefit. Source: 6 years working as IT for a public university.
nostrademons 4y ago
Baumol's Cost Disease. Basically anything that requires non-scalable human interactions is super expensive, because the cost of labor in the U.S. is super expensive. People don't realize it because when the Baby Boomers grew up, the U.S. effectively had a monopoly on capital, which meant that our "ordinary factory workers" could enjoy massively outsized productivity relative to the rest of the world. Now our ordinary factory workers are being undercut by ordinary factory workers abroad, since the rest of the world has rebuilt its capital stock, and so only professions that still enjoy global monopolies (eg. big tech) can afford service workers. For comparison, a mid-range preschool in the Bay Area costs about $30K/year, vs. $14K/year in-state tuition for UC Berkeley. If students get about 24 hours of instruction/week, for two 13-week semesters, that works out to about $22/hour. A nanny is about $25-30/hour, a therapist is $100+/hour, plumbers are about $200/hour, a lawyer can be $750-1000/hour. Given 20-30 students in the classroom, costs are not all that different from lawyers. Schools in Europe/Asia are government-subsidized, like the public school system in the U.S, so you don't see the true cost.
ChrisLomont 4y ago
>Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia US schools get far less from the state than Europe and Asia. You can find many school budgets online, including sources of revenue. So this is easy to check. [2] lets you look at country per capita spending on tertiary education - the regions you mention tend to spend significantly more tax dollars than the US does. The result is that most European and Asian schools get funded by taxpayers, i.e., those not attending university end up helping pay for those who do, while in the US more of the funding is paid by people that attend schools. Also, the US, as a result, also ends up with a higher percentage of adults with college degrees than those with state sponsored schools [1], since those places tend to make it harder to go to college, since taxpayer pressure on cost reduces opportunity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TERT.PC.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TERT.PC.ZS
- joshuaissac 4y ago
  > [2] lets you look at country per capita spending on tertiary education The link shows government spending per student as a percentage of GDP per capita, rather than overall government spending per capita. This figure can get distorted when there are more students in the system for any reason (such as due to private investment). > since those places tend to make it harder to go to college, since taxpayer pressure on cost reduces opportunity. This does not follow. Rather, having more students decreases the per-student government expenditure figure, even as the burden on the taxpayer stays the same. As a percentage of GDP, US government expenditure on tertiary education is roughly in the middle of what various countries in Europe spend. https://www.statista.com/statistics/707557/higher-education-spending-share-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/707557/higher-education-...
  - ChrisLomont 4y ago
    >Rather, having more students decreases the per-student government expenditure figure, even as the burden on the taxpayer stays the same. That does not follow unless students cost zero to educate. As more students enter, it costs more. >As a percentage of GDP,.... And the US educates a larger portion of their population than most (if not all?) European countries. This is why using % of GDP is misleading, since the countries are paying for a different rate of educated people. The cost per student is more applicable, since as those other countries scale up the number educated will necessarily spend more, since on the margin people don't cost zero to educate. This is why I pointed out the rates of education are different. Comparing a country spending 1% to educate 2% to one spending 3% to educate 10%, only looking at the 1% and 3%, is missing important information.
yumraj 4y ago
> where is the money even going? Paying for stadiums, sports teams and millions in coach salaries.
cosmodisk 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_endowment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_endowment https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances/#:~:text=4%25-,Endowment,aid%20during%20the%20fiscal%20year https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances/#:~:text=.... https://news.mit.edu/2020/financials-endowment-2020 https://news.mit.edu/2020/financials-endowment-2020
dlsa 4y ago
No idea. But aren't those campuses wonderful with their huge buildings, new carpet, great landscaping, and every admin staff member has an amazing office chair and fitout. They even refresh that carpet every year along with brand new seating. The art! Its always changing as well. The university cars are great too. I've seen plenty of amazing cars that researchers drive around. The libraries are constantly changing each month. They renovated that building just last summer, didn't they? That oval is being redone as well. Amazing. Like I said, no idea. Ok, maybe some idea.
- musicale 4y ago
  It may be an interesting exercise to divide the non-teaching administrative budget by the number of students.
  - dlsa 4y ago
    That would be a useful comparison for ranking. Exactly what is their overhead?
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Audit them to find out.
misiti3780 4y ago
lots of middle mgmt.
bell-cot 4y ago
~6 years ago, the Univ. of Michigan did major renovations on its large student dormitories. We're talking old but structurally quite sound reinforced concrete & masonry buildings, each housing ~1,000 undergraduates. U of M spent about $100,000 per student bed (not per room) on those renovations. They could have bought brand new, custom built, state-of-the-art suburban-sprawl McMansions and given every student their own bedroom (vs. mostly-shared dorm rooms) for less money. And had the old dorms left over. Yes, that money was on UM's Housing (vs. academic) side. But you should not expect other non-classroom, non-academic spending (by any part of UM, or similar institutions) to be any less profligate.
lupire 4y ago
This is offtopic. PhD has no tuition, except in an accounting sense (you pay tuition, they pay you back as a stipend).
- tombert 4y ago
  If you're part-time, they typically don't even give you a stipend. I have to pay roughly 11,000 pounds per year for my PhD.
adventured 4y ago
Admin and prestige buildings, across decades, along with the upkeep related to those things now and going forward (pensions/retirements, building maintenance & upkeep). Also, US incomes are among the highest in the world, everything should seem expensive here compared to the typical European nation. Comparing to eg Japan or Britain doesn't work, our incomes are far higher. If you want to look at costs for the median or above, you have to reference Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia for comps. Simultaneously our costs are still too high even after you adjust for that (in things like healthcare and education).
grier 4y ago
This article is about graduate student stipends. Tuition does not have a cost for these students, so the stipend only needs to cover living costs (which as the article points out, it frequently does not). In CS, graduate students often intern over the summer and can make up for some of the difference. Tuition is paid by the university, typically from a grant.
confidantlake 4y ago
Going to admins getting paid high 6 figure or sometimes even 7 figure salaries.
musicale 4y ago
> These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant tax benefits), so where is the money even going? 1. Non-teaching admin positions, like vice presidents and associate deans of whatever, and all of their organizations and support staff. 2. Large bureaucracies that eat money and grow continuously. 3. Country club campuses and amenities. 4. Student services. 5. Legal departments and regulatory compliance.
metadat 4y ago
Admins make ridiculous salaries relative to everyone else in education.

renewiltord 4y ago

These places are primarily admin staff with a small teaching department.

johnebgd 4y ago

Middle management/admin salaries.

twistedpair 4y ago

Ever seen Football coach, and college president salaries? For state colleges, they're often some of the highest paid employees in the state. [1] 1. https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo-swinney-ed-orgeron-highest-paid-state-employees https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/28261213/dabo-s...

dgfitz 4y ago
The vast majority of coaches don't make this kind of money. I refuse to believe tuition is insanely high because of coaching salaries. I was actually under the (possibly incorrect) assumption that coaches salaries come largely from boosters and things like ticket sales, jersey sales, etc.
- twistedpair 4y ago
  Here's some real data for you, in a NY college no less. President of my undergrad college made $884K last year [1], but a medical school professor made nearly $2M. 1. https://nonprofitlight.com/ny/rochester/university-of-rochester https://nonprofitlight.com/ny/rochester/university-of-roches...
  - mikkergp 4y ago
    They're a professor for Orthopedics. Orthopedics is the highest paid specialty and at a university, Professor == Physician. Point is he's making that money for the hospital for patient services, not because of his teaching.
  - temp8964 4y ago
    Medical schools usually have separated funding sources too. Many professors are in fact practicing medicine in their field.
Cerealkiller050 4y ago
Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a bargain. Not only that, for most universities college football (some men's basketball) cover all the other men's and women's sports that hemorrhage money.
- leothecool 4y ago
  Coach salaries -would- look like a bargain if revenue correlated with win-loss rate or quite frankly any measurable activity the coaches do. But, they don't. IMO the guy in big-10 football who deserves a multi million dollar salary is the guy in the mascot fursuit.
- mbesto 4y ago
  > Then you look at the revenue college football brings in to the rest of the university, the coach salaries looks like a bargain. Now do this analysis while paying student-athletes salaries and tell me if the coaches are bargain.
- triceratops 4y ago
  I, too, can run a sports team profitably if I don't have to pay my players.
throwawayboise 4y ago
Athletics is normally (always?) a separate self-funding enterprise attached to th e university. Tutition dollars don't pay the coaches; alumni donations/gifts, sponsors, and ticket sales do.
temp8964 4y ago
No. Football coaches don’t get salary from tuitions. Athletic department has separated funding sources.
- danaris 4y ago
  This may be true for some colleges and universities, but certainly isn't universally so.

RaoulP 4y ago

I'm curious about this too, in my mind it doesn't add up at all.

tombert 4y ago

To be fair, if you graduate in four years, and are alright with state universities or community colleges, and major in some kind of field that allows you to be an engineer, university doesn't have to put you in lifelong debt. Many students do community college for the first two years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the order of ~$30,000 of debt. That's a lot of money, but generally not a life-ruining amount for an engineer. That's not even counting the weird universities like WGU, where you can get a bachelors for less than ~$15,000 without too much trouble.

BeetleB 4y ago
> Many students do community college for the first two years, and then finish at a university, and end up on the order of ~$30,000 of debt. For people in many European countries, this is an absurd amount of debt to get a university degree. Edit: For context: About 20 years ago, my university's annual fees was $15000/year for out of state students, and $4600 for in state - in today's dollars. Now that university charges $28K for out of state and $8.3K for in state - almost doubled after accounting for inflation. In other nearby universities I see people paying $15K/year for in state. This is a huge increase in two decades.
- tombert 4y ago
  That's entirely fair, I'm a big proponent of making colleges either free, or extremely heavily subsidized by the government. I completely agree that it's still ridiculous to leave with $30,000 of debt. I'm just saying that, for someone working an engineering job, that is not generally a life-ruining amount of money, especially in comparison to the increased earning potential that a degree affords you (which is, I suspect, why they get away with charging such exorbitant tuition in the first place).
  - Dma54rhs 4y ago
    Are dormitories / living expenses included in those American debt numbers or you take them as separate?

hirako2000 4y ago

Most of it goes to academic instruction expenses, and operations. The fast growing expense is more likely the latter as administrations have rather grown in size per student. Land appreciates in value too, even if the universities may own campuses, it remains in the balance sheets. Research is also a cost, even though they some of it back, they aren't VCs so this can bleed money there as well, and pretty fast, especially for underperforming institutions. I'm shocked shocked by the tuition fees in the U.S. But comparing with India and even Europe is a bit silly since those places don't compare in term of university ranking and average income level. Those professors/researchers are packed with long years of studies plus a loan they had accumulated themselves so it's a bit like a positive feedback loop.

prepend 4y ago

> Where is all this tuition even going to? I have a family member who works in the “alumni relations” department of a small, regional public university. Probably ranked like #300 or something. There are like 5 people in the department. They make a magazine, email newsletter and schedule alumni events. It was really surreal when they explained their job and that the department exists. There’s an admin costs problem in this country. There’s no sufficient governance or oversight in controlling university spending. This is even a public university and it’s just bizarre that they can make up positions that shouldn’t even exist.

Invictus0 4y ago
You haven't presented enough evidence to show that there is a problem. If the alumni relations department is bringing in donations greater than their salaries, they are a net benefit to the university. Even if they don't bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus: it might bring in better students, spread the word about the university, and it might lead to big gifts later down the line.
- muh_gradle 4y ago
  Administrative bloat in higher education is well known at this point, and it's absolutely a part of where student money is going. All I see is a lot of "mights" in your post.
- didericis 4y ago
  > Even if they don’t bring in that amount every year, it might still be a net plus Or it might not. Thats the root of the problem. The administrators are the people coming up with the metrics and arguments to justify their own existence. I’m sure many of them believe they’re making a positive contribution, and the situation is more complex and tragic than just “these are the baddies” type arguments suggest, but there’s still an accountability problem that needs to be reckoned with.
- evolve2k 4y ago
  I also reject the assertion they shouldn’t exist. The “Alumni network” is listed as one of the additional benefits when enrolling for a degree. Further when the engineering firm you started after graduation with some of your classmates wines a National science award. Getting that profiled in the alumni newsletter could be unlocking a range of oppprtunities for your firm from grant funder interest to new commercialisation opportunity, all coming out of the alumni network. Just cause the work is quiet doesn’t mean it’s pointless.

mysterydip 4y ago

I worked at a small private college for a few years in IT. Tuition increased every year, yet our budget always seemed to be the same or smaller ("we need to do more with less"), and my salary certainly didn't get proportionately larger.

eunos 4y ago

Student services in US universities are massive coupled with salaries for coterie of admins, deans and middle-men.

BeetleB 4y ago

Typical culprits: - Too much admin per student compared to 40 years ago - (Much more likely): Severe decline in funds from the state. I know at least one nearby university that showed the data that the increase in tuition from 1980 to 2010 was almost entirely due to government cuts, and that the budget spending per student hadn't changed in that time frame - adjusted for inflation. - Fancy buildings

musicale 4y ago
> - (Much more likely): Severe decline in funds from the state. I know at least one nearby university that showed the data that the increase in tuition from 1980 to 2010 was almost entirely due to government cuts, and that the budget spending per student hadn't changed in that time frame - adjusted for inflation This may be a good explanation for public institutions, but what is the justification for private institutions? For example, a year at the University of Pennsylvania (a private university) in 1980 cost about $7200 (equivalent to $25K today), but Penn currently charges about $75K per year. What is the justification for the additional tripling of charges, even after adjusting for inflation?

tyoma 4y ago

We don’t have to guess. Most US universities are public institutions so you can just Google up their budget. As an example, here is the UC system: https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4511 https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4511 https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2021/chapters/chapter-6.html https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2021/chapt... About 70% of the UC budget goes to salaries and benefits. Of that, 70% of staff is non-academic. Full context below: Non-academic staff employees constitute nearly 70 percent of UC’s workforce and are responsible for health services, student services, instruction and research support, compliance, and general administration (6.1.1). In October 2020, this group included 143,188 individuals. Overall, this staff workforce represented over 115,577 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees in that month. STAFF WORKFORCE About six out of every ten UC staff FTE are working for the University of California Health system. These frontline workers (including doctors, nurses, administrators, technicians, and allied health professionals) are playing a critical role in California’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 97 percent of these employees are supported by non-core funds, typically the revenues generated by hospital services. Students often work part-time on campus as part of their financial aid packages or for research experience. During the pandemic, UC campuses transitioned to remote instruction. With staff, faculty, and students no longer on campus, student employee headcount at general campus halved from 36,000 in October 2019 to 18,000 in October 2020. General campus, non-student employees are the remainder of the University’s staff, at 43,752 FTE. This includes student services employees, career advisors, IT specialists, research administration, laboratory staff, food and auxiliary service workers, accountants, maintenance and janitorial staff, safety workers, and analysts (6.1.1).

colinmhayes 4y ago
So 40% of employees aren't paid by the university system's academic arm, but by the healthcare section. 30% are academic staff, and 30% are support staff.
- daxfohl 4y ago
  Even with the cost of medicine going through the roof, college kids don't incur a whole lot of medical costs on average. So it's surprising the university would need to spend so much there.

haakonhr 4y ago

I don't think it is fair to compare with Europe. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology, as an example, got around 1b USD over the national budget. Stipends and loans to students are provided by another governmental body (Lånekassen), but in the US some students get a "full ride" (incl. accommodation and so on). However, the amount of debt you hear some americans ending up with is crazy.

RaoulP 4y ago
Just to add to that - Students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology do not pay tuition fees. So the stipend and loan provided by Lånekassen go mainly to living expenses.

throwawayboise 4y ago

> Where is all this tuition even going to? Administrative staff, which has ballooned over the past several decades. Many of these people have mediocre ability, don't really do much, but once a position is created it is hardly ever eliminated. Buildings and renovations. Ever seen a modern student dorm? They are luxurious compared to what they were in the 1980s. It's a constant competitive war as students will actually choose a school based on the living accomodations over the education. Programs to assist students who should really not be there, and other programs that don't seem to recognize that college students are adults and should be expected to manage their lives by themselves. Do they really need the university to arrange coloring book time to help with the stress of mid-terms?

delaynomore 4y ago
>Many of these people have mediocre ability Perhaps. University never intends to compete for top talent with their salary offerings. I recall during a salary discussion years ago, my manager at the time mentioned that the salary was indeed below market but offered up the point below as an advantage. >don't really do much, but once a position is created it is hardly ever eliminated. Yup. This was true and was a definitely a benefit. Source: 6 years working as IT for a public university.

nostrademons 4y ago

Baumol's Cost Disease. Basically anything that requires non-scalable human interactions is super expensive, because the cost of labor in the U.S. is super expensive. People don't realize it because when the Baby Boomers grew up, the U.S. effectively had a monopoly on capital, which meant that our "ordinary factory workers" could enjoy massively outsized productivity relative to the rest of the world. Now our ordinary factory workers are being undercut by ordinary factory workers abroad, since the rest of the world has rebuilt its capital stock, and so only professions that still enjoy global monopolies (eg. big tech) can afford service workers. For comparison, a mid-range preschool in the Bay Area costs about $30K/year, vs. $14K/year in-state tuition for UC Berkeley. If students get about 24 hours of instruction/week, for two 13-week semesters, that works out to about $22/hour. A nanny is about $25-30/hour, a therapist is $100+/hour, plumbers are about $200/hour, a lawyer can be $750-1000/hour. Given 20-30 students in the classroom, costs are not all that different from lawyers. Schools in Europe/Asia are government-subsidized, like the public school system in the U.S, so you don't see the true cost.

ChrisLomont 4y ago

>Schools in the US charge an absurd amount of tuition compared to schools in Europe/Asia US schools get far less from the state than Europe and Asia. You can find many school budgets online, including sources of revenue. So this is easy to check. [2] lets you look at country per capita spending on tertiary education - the regions you mention tend to spend significantly more tax dollars than the US does. The result is that most European and Asian schools get funded by taxpayers, i.e., those not attending university end up helping pay for those who do, while in the US more of the funding is paid by people that attend schools. Also, the US, as a result, also ends up with a higher percentage of adults with college degrees than those with state sponsored schools [1], since those places tend to make it harder to go to college, since taxpayer pressure on cost reduces opportunity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_... [2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TERT.PC.ZS https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TERT.PC.ZS

joshuaissac 4y ago
> [2] lets you look at country per capita spending on tertiary education The link shows government spending per student as a percentage of GDP per capita, rather than overall government spending per capita. This figure can get distorted when there are more students in the system for any reason (such as due to private investment). > since those places tend to make it harder to go to college, since taxpayer pressure on cost reduces opportunity. This does not follow. Rather, having more students decreases the per-student government expenditure figure, even as the burden on the taxpayer stays the same. As a percentage of GDP, US government expenditure on tertiary education is roughly in the middle of what various countries in Europe spend. https://www.statista.com/statistics/707557/higher-education-spending-share-gdp/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/707557/higher-education-...
- ChrisLomont 4y ago
  >Rather, having more students decreases the per-student government expenditure figure, even as the burden on the taxpayer stays the same. That does not follow unless students cost zero to educate. As more students enter, it costs more. >As a percentage of GDP,.... And the US educates a larger portion of their population than most (if not all?) European countries. This is why using % of GDP is misleading, since the countries are paying for a different rate of educated people. The cost per student is more applicable, since as those other countries scale up the number educated will necessarily spend more, since on the margin people don't cost zero to educate. This is why I pointed out the rates of education are different. Comparing a country spending 1% to educate 2% to one spending 3% to educate 10%, only looking at the 1% and 3%, is missing important information.

yumraj 4y ago

> where is the money even going? Paying for stadiums, sports teams and millions in coach salaries.

cosmodisk 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_endowment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University_endowment https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances/#:~:text=4%25-,Endowment,aid%20during%20the%20fiscal%20year https://facts.stanford.edu/administration/finances/#:~:text=.... https://news.mit.edu/2020/financials-endowment-2020 https://news.mit.edu/2020/financials-endowment-2020

dlsa 4y ago

No idea. But aren't those campuses wonderful with their huge buildings, new carpet, great landscaping, and every admin staff member has an amazing office chair and fitout. They even refresh that carpet every year along with brand new seating. The art! Its always changing as well. The university cars are great too. I've seen plenty of amazing cars that researchers drive around. The libraries are constantly changing each month. They renovated that building just last summer, didn't they? That oval is being redone as well. Amazing. Like I said, no idea. Ok, maybe some idea.

musicale 4y ago
It may be an interesting exercise to divide the non-teaching administrative budget by the number of students.
- dlsa 4y ago
  That would be a useful comparison for ranking. Exactly what is their overhead?

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Audit them to find out.

misiti3780 4y ago

lots of middle mgmt.

bell-cot 4y ago

~6 years ago, the Univ. of Michigan did major renovations on its large student dormitories. We're talking old but structurally quite sound reinforced concrete & masonry buildings, each housing ~1,000 undergraduates. U of M spent about $100,000 per student bed (not per room) on those renovations. They could have bought brand new, custom built, state-of-the-art suburban-sprawl McMansions and given every student their own bedroom (vs. mostly-shared dorm rooms) for less money. And had the old dorms left over. Yes, that money was on UM's Housing (vs. academic) side. But you should not expect other non-classroom, non-academic spending (by any part of UM, or similar institutions) to be any less profligate.

lupire 4y ago

This is offtopic. PhD has no tuition, except in an accounting sense (you pay tuition, they pay you back as a stipend).

tombert 4y ago
If you're part-time, they typically don't even give you a stipend. I have to pay roughly 11,000 pounds per year for my PhD.

adventured 4y ago

Admin and prestige buildings, across decades, along with the upkeep related to those things now and going forward (pensions/retirements, building maintenance & upkeep). Also, US incomes are among the highest in the world, everything should seem expensive here compared to the typical European nation. Comparing to eg Japan or Britain doesn't work, our incomes are far higher. If you want to look at costs for the median or above, you have to reference Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia for comps. Simultaneously our costs are still too high even after you adjust for that (in things like healthcare and education).

grier 4y ago

This article is about graduate student stipends. Tuition does not have a cost for these students, so the stipend only needs to cover living costs (which as the article points out, it frequently does not). In CS, graduate students often intern over the summer and can make up for some of the difference. Tuition is paid by the university, typically from a grant.

confidantlake 4y ago

Going to admins getting paid high 6 figure or sometimes even 7 figure salaries.

musicale 4y ago

> These colleges are all "nonprofit" (and get significant tax benefits), so where is the money even going? 1. Non-teaching admin positions, like vice presidents and associate deans of whatever, and all of their organizations and support staff. 2. Large bureaucracies that eat money and grow continuously. 3. Country club campuses and amenities. 4. Student services. 5. Legal departments and regulatory compliance.

metadat 4y ago

Admins make ridiculous salaries relative to everyone else in education.