No one seems to be really looking at why college costs are increasing as fast as they are. At least, no one seems to be willing to admit exactly why.
I am frustrated that no one will explain to me what is causing our costs to increase as fast as they are. I have access to what budget information my administration will give me, and this is what I see:
•Faculty and academic staff compensation has gone up by 4%/year for the last 10 years
•Non-compensation Academic spending (supplies and equipment) has been flat for 10 years. This includes projectors, computers, and all the academic technology.
•The university's budget has increased by 9%/year for the last 10 years
•Administrative-staff compensation is only 2/3 that of academic-staff compensation(total), but that budget item increases by a larger absolute number than the total academic staff compensation every year. Despite this, the administration insists that they are only getting the same 4% raises that the academic wing is.
•No one can tell me what parts of the budget are increasing by 12-15% every year. Since academic costs are increasing by less than 4%/year at it is ~40% of the budget, something else must be increasing by much more than 4% to average 9%. I have been told that is not the case.
•Our health insurance costs have been flat or declined each year for the last 4 years.
From this, I can determine what is NOT causing the rapid increase in costs.
• It is not faculty raises (duh!)
• It is not our health insurance (our admins love to blame that for the increases)
• It is not instructional technology. Yes, it is getting more advanced, but it is also getting cheaper.
• It is not academic supplies
• It is not utilities. Yes, utility costs are going up, but when I checked the rates, they are under 5%/year.
Therefore, these costs must be outside the academic area completely. These costs have nothing to do with delivering the 'academic product'.
The other faculty are not helpful and in fact get mad if I ask what is causing the costs to go up so rapidly. I think if people really knew what was causing the increase, they would be highly upset (if not, why keep it such a secret).
"Yes", you might say, "we all know that it is caused by increasing the luxury services demanded by today's students". But how much is it costing EXACTLY? And how much is actually due to an increase in the administrative salaries and/or staffing? Until we know exactly what is causing the increase and by how much, not much will be done to stop it.
Financial aid. See if you can get someone to tell you what your discount-rate trend has been for the past 10 years or so. At a lot of places it's gone from, say, 30% to perhaps 50% during that time. Factoring that in, the net expenses for students, compensating for inflation, have quite likely not gone up that much at all.
It's hard to figure out how to manage that problem, however. If you're a private and you lower your tuition and your discount rate at the same time, people will think you're in trouble, and potential and current students will be mad even if there's no net change in their costs.
If you're a public, just wait to see what's going to happen. As tuition rates go up to compensate for reduced state subsidies, these institutions are going to begin to look a great deal more like privates than they do now. My institution gets on the order of 15% of its operating budget from the endowment--quite a few state institutions are getting pretty close to this figure from state appropriations, so the superficial cost differentials are going to narrow considerably. In some states (e.g., Georgia), the publics can only award funded scholarships, not tuition discount. There will be some trouble there.
I'd also qualify your comments on academic technology. Yes, it's getting cheaper, but the demand for it, in terms of quantity, support, and upgrading, is getting bigger. I'd have to look at the budget, but our costs have gone up quite a lot in the past 10 years even as equipment has gotten less expensive. For example, we've given students laptops for about 10 years--at the beginning of that time, our spec for them led to costs of abotu $2,000 per unit, while now they cost around $900 each (2-year replacement cycle). The entire difference, though, is absorbed by things like enhanced support services, replacing astoundingly expensive bulbs in classroom projectors, ensuring that the network reaches reliably into every corner of campus, etc.
Liability insurance has increased tremendously.
Travel costs have gone up radically.
But most of it is financial aid. Believe me, I know.
