It’s wearing me down. I think I’m in bad need of a cough drop. Yesterday, Dartmouth College announced that they are trimming jobs because of the economy. Just like other businesses and companies we’ve been hearing for the past few months right? But then they also announced that tuition for next year will increase 4.8%. It got me thinking, how many colleges & universities have announced tuition prices for the next academic year? So I went to my friends at Google and here’s what I saw on just the first page:
· Dartmouth College – New Hampshire – increase of 4.8%
· Maryville College – Ohio – increase of 3.4%
· Augustana College – Illinois – increase of 3.9%
· Case Western Reserve University - Ohio – increase of 2.9%
· University of Arizona – Arizona – increase of 3.0% (residents); 12% for non-residents
· Marquette University – Wisconsin – increase of 3.6%
And that was just the first page! The president of the University of North Carolina said he was proud that this year’s tuition increase was the lowest percentage since he’s been there. (nice spin) Only one school – Merrimack College in North Andover, MA reported (on this first page) that they are holding tuition costs steady. They said that they have managed their budgets well and “We wanted to give parents and students a breather in difficult times," said Merrimack President Ronald Champagne. "It was a big decision for us." (finally!)
I can hear it now – “you can’t compare us to other companies – we’re not a business, we prepare young people to have successful futures.” “Look at all of the scholarship programs we offer.” “Our endowments took a nasty hit as well as everyone else last year you know.” (Dartmouth’s endowment is down to $3 billion).
I guess I’m still stuck on that old economic thing called supply & demand. Prices go down if people stop buying goods & services. Seems to me we recently experienced that last summer when gas prices were $5 a gallon. Apparently we reduced consumption and prices fell. Where is the outrage of college costs? We’ll hear about increasing Pell grants and loan programs and such, but we never talk about the actual cost.
I have to go find a cough drop…..
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Agree completely. Instead of coming up with ways to increase funding via loan programs, we need get cost creep under control at the university level. This is partly the responsibility of our government (since they are distorting the market's ability to pay by providing cheap borrowing) and partly ours as individual consumers. We all need to say enough is enough.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this seems to be easier in the aggregate than as true individual decisions are made. "My son or daughter gets into X, we're going to find a way to pay for X."
But is it worth it?