Why college tuition is up 1000 percent the last four decades while the consumer price index is up only 240 percent. From Tom Lindsay at Forbes, via davidstockmanscontracorner.com:
A new book by Frank Mussano, former dean of York College of Pennsylvania,and Robert V. Iosue takes on the crisis of tuition hyperinflation. The book’s title conveys its conclusion: College Tuition: Four Decades of Financial Deception. Summarizing their work in a recent article, Mussano and Iosue argue that “colleges need a business productivity audit” if we are to address what they identify as the primary drivers of the historic tuition and student-loan debt increases over the past forty years—“professors are teaching less while administrators proliferate.”
Mussano and Iosue find that, over the past four decades tuition has surged “more than 1000 percent, while the consumer-price index has risen only 240 percent.” Stated in terms that hit home for average college students (and their parents), they find that, whereas in 1970 the percentage of annual household income needed to pay for the average private four-year school was 16 percent, by 2010 the percentage had risen to 36 percent.
Mussano and Iosue demonstrate that roughly 75 percent of average university costs consist of personnel expenses and benefits. However, university professors spend on average “much less time” teaching in the classroom than they did 20 years ago. Citing statistics compiled by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, Mussano and Iosue find that 60 percent of professors surveyed in 1989 reported that they spent nine or more hours weekly in the classroom. But, by 2010, this percentage had fallen to 44 percent. “The traditional 12-15 hours a week teaching load is changing into a six-to-nine-hour workweek, a significant decrease in productivity.”
The authors are less-than impressed with what they call the “typical defense” offered for this significant reduction in faculty teaching workloads. Only a “handful of elite researchers,” they argue, face “increased research demands, more extensive classroom preparation and committee work, as well as additional administrative and student-counseling responsibilities.” Moreover, high-school teachers spend 20-30 hours a week in the classroom, “while also facing increased administrative responsibilities.” Nor should we forget that, given the constraints on the American economy in the last few years, “some parents work longer hours or perhaps even two jobs to defray a child’s college expenses.”
Add to declining faculty teaching the trend commonly referred to as “administrative bloat.” Mussano and Iosue point to U.S. Department of Education statistics showing that “the number of college administrators has increased 50 percent faster than the number of instructors since 2001.” They cite some of the more glaring examples of recent bloat: The University of Minnesota, through adding 1,000 administrators over the past decade, has now reached a “ratio of one administrator for every 3.5 students.” Not to be outdone, the University of Pennsylvania increased its “nonteaching staff” by 83 percent, despite the fact student enrollments as well as instructional expenditures “did not grow anywhere near those rates.”
To continue reading: Less Teaching and More Administrative Bloat
