Tuition Fairness
January 29, 2012 6 Comments
I’m glad that President Obama is turning some attention to the cost of higher education. Among the reforms I hope he’ll consider will be to add a little capitalism to university tuition.
Would you buy a set of furniture or a car if all the salesman would tell you about the price was how much the first of four annual payments would be, with the sizes of the other payments to be determined later? Not if you’re smart. But that’s what college students are required to do when they put down their (or their parents’ or the government’s) money for a college education.
One reason colleges get away with jacking up tuition each year is that they have a large number of trapped consumers. A student who has invested one-to-four years worth of time and tuition has to pay whatever is asked or lose a lot of the value of what’s already been invested.
Why doesn’t the government require colleges to tell students the cost of a degree’s worth of tuition before the student makes the purchase? Why not, in other words, require schools to honor each student’s tuition price for at least four years? Schools could charge incoming freshman as much as they wanted, but those freshmen, once enrolled, would have four years to complete their educations at the same annual cost. Schools and programs at which four years aren’t sufficient to earn degrees would be required to honor the rate until the students had been there long enough to have a reasonable chance of graduating.
The smart universities would go beyond the federal requirement and honor incoming students’ rates for as long as those students stayed continuously enrolled. This would encourage students to stick around to earn second and third degrees at the “discount” price. Schools that jacked up the price, as allowed, after four years of study, would find a return to the old-fashioned pattern of leaving school after four years–a good development for students, but maybe not for schools.
The universities simply need to drop their tuition. When I started at Purdue, fall 1982, tuition for full-time resident was just under $800. I went there for 12 years (two degrees, and I went part time a lot when working on my 2nd degree). So I paid for school as I went, I graduated debt-free. Naturally the cost of living was lower then, but tuition has increased something like over 300% since I went. Purdue had no problems running and functioning as one of the top universities in the Big Ten as well as engineering with the lower price of tuition during my time. There is no need for schools to increase their tuition like they have.
>The universities simply need to drop their tuition.
Universities need to drop tuition, but there doesn’t seem to be anything “simple” about it. Obama is (talking about) adressing some of the reasons for that. The inabililty of students to know what tuition will cost until after enrolling and starting to pay is a reason that I’ve never heard anyone so much as mention.
Do you think there’s a chance that Purdue will return to more reasonable tuition? Do you think there’s anything we can do to encourage it to do that? I don’t have any answers (beyond forbidding schools to raise prices on those who’ve already started paying), but I’m glad Obama has started the conversation.
No, there isn’t anything simple about it. The chances of dropping? Probably slim to none. But I do hope that they stop increasing at the very least. I’ve watched the colleges evolve into something which resembles corporations now, and it makes me very sad. Especially when it comes to sports. When I attended, corporate sponsorship was not allowed. If I recall correctly, the uniforms were not even allowed to display the logo of the maker. But, alas, greed takes over.
You raise an important issue. The way college sports are run a lot of college athletes become unpaid employees, helping to raise a lot of money for their schools without even getting the education that’s supposed to be their compensation.
That is very true, and most certainly has changed as well. When Keady coached Purdue basketball, he was very strict with the grades. I hope Matt Painter took after him, especially since he played under him. (yes, I love my alma mater and am a bit biased in their favor) But so much has changed in that area as well. Just look at all the stuff that happened at Penn St. with the scandal of Paterno and the administration conveniently looking the other way by just barely doing what was required for them to do in that case, all because the revenue that school brings in with the football program. No, Sandusky has not been proven guilty, but based upon what I’ve read, it’s hard to think otherwise. When the school came out opening and fired Paterno, there has to be some pretty damning evidence that’s come forth.
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