CandidProf: an educational shafting
by Miki SaxonBy CandidProf, who teaches physics and astronomy at a state university. He shares his thoughts and experiences teaching today’s students anonymously every other Thursday—anonymously because that’s the only way he can be truly candid. Read all of CandidProf here.
College is expensive. Students have to pay for tuition, fees, books, school supplies, and all sorts of other expenses. Many years ago, college was still expensive, but at least the average college student could afford to go to college. But tuition, fees and textbooks have increased in price at far more than the inflation rate. Students and parents are understandably upset over this. At many institutions, the tuition goes up every year, sometimes at several times the inflation rate. Many people think that the universities are just raising tuition to be greedy. It isn’t that simple, though.
The average student’s tuition does not adequately cover the cost of education. College is not like high school. College professors need to maintain expertise and remain current in their fields of study. That means more than just reading about the subject on the internet. Also, college professors need to be paid. Libraries need to be current, and professional journals are not cheap. Books are not cheap for libraries, either.
State colleges and universities are supposed to be supported by tax dollars. However, state legislatures have cut funding to higher education, reasoning that colleges and universities can make up the difference through tuition. That means that tuition goes up to cover inflation, and then goes up even more to cover the reduction in state funding.
Private institutions rely not only on tuition, but on investments from their endowments to generate operating funds. In today’s economic climate, those endowments are not bringing in much money, so tuition has to rise to compensate.
Then, textbook companies keep coming up with new editions of textbooks. They are pretty proactive killing the used book market, too. I have on occasion tried to adopt an old edition of textbooks when the new editions come out, only to find that the bookstore could not get copies of the old edition. We wound up using the new editions. So much for trying to save my students some money.
As you can imagine, costs quickly spiral upwards too high for most students to be able to afford college. There are some grants and scholarships, but most are for those who have very low incomes.
The wealthy can afford college.
The poor have it paid for them.
The middle class, the bulk of our students, don’t qualify for grants and can’t afford college themselves.
This is where student loans come in. All across the nation, college financial aid offices are advising students to secure student loads. But most of these students are young and have not had any experience with loans. They quickly get in over their heads. Nearly 2/3 of students wind up graduating college in debt. Most owe over $20,000 in loans. Many owe over $50,000 and some students owe nearly $100,000 (if they go from undergraduate to graduate, law or medical school).
This is a serious problem. Students are graduating deep in debt.
Worse, shortly after graduation they have to start paying back their loans, but this is when they are least able to do so. After all, your first job after college normally is not a high paying job (even for highly paid fields). So students graduate with debt, just as they are trying to buy cars, buy houses, start families and do many other things that incur additional debt and expenses.
To add insult to injury, students often have to take more classes than they used to. High schools are turning out students who are not at all prepared for college level work. Close to half of our students require some remedial work in mathematics, reading, and writing. Those remedial classes have tuition, but they do not count towards degrees. This adds a year or more to an undergraduate program and it incurs more tuition, fees and textbook expenses. That is a problem, however, that needs to be fixed at the high school level.
So, what are we to do at the college level? The solution is not to simply force colleges to lower tuition. After all, tuition was raised not out of greed, but as a way to fund the college after state funds and endowments dried up. If states were to fund higher education at the rate that they used to, then tuition would drop. As for textbooks, I’ll leave that to a later post.
What is clear to me is that something needs to be done. We are doing our students a disservice if they are graduating deep in debt. Perhaps our financial aid offices should be working to help students find part-time jobs to fund their education. Perhaps there needs to be more direct government assistance to students in the form of grants.
It is hard to say just what needs to be done. But I see the cost of college getting higher and higher. In fact, it is high enough now that I think that I’d have had trouble affording it and I seriously doubt that I’d have been able to afford graduate school.
There is not an easy fix to this problem. Any fix would require a cohesive and comprehensive plan.
And I simply don’t see that happening.
Your comments—priceless
October 30th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Hey, Prof – Yes, yes, yes, and yes.
But it used to be that if you couldn’t afford something, you went down another path. I reckon if we paid profs (I was one for 35 years) on the basis of their indirect contribution to the economy. the dilemma would be resolved.
Covered by the old saw: Most people prefer a problem they can’t solved to a solution they don’t like.
Where did the mandate come from?
November 1st, 2008 at 11:13 am
Miki Saxon made a very good point about the problem we are all facing in colleges. But I didn’t notice that either of the presidential candidates had addressed the problem. The point is now only the very rich or very poor can live with the high cost of the education, but what about the middle class? If they can not even afford the college education, how can we still call them “middle class”? I guess our whole country are poor now except those probably 1% of billionaires.
November 1st, 2008 at 11:58 am
Lee, CandidProf will reply as soon as he’s free, but in the meantime I have to say that I don’t see your idea as a solution. I agree that pay needs to change, but the basic problem is a lack of money, ie, funding, and that, in turn, (IMO) is caused by the high stupidity, short-term thinking of our “leaders.”
November 1st, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Danny, thanks for stopping by and adding to the discussion. I didn’t write the post, but I have to say that there must be a middle class, since both candidates keep talking about them:)
I agree that education isn’t addressed, unless you consider standardized tests that inspire schools to lower their standards as addressing the situation.
But other than lip-service, it doesn’t seem as if education has been seriously addressed in decades. School funding is the first thing cut and the last to grow. When California voters approved the lottery to fund education, the first thing the legislature did was reduce state funding by an equal amount—kinda defeats the purpose. And if you look back over those same decades you can see the enormous dumbing down of the population.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Leo,
I assure you that around here professors don’t get paid all that great. I do well enough to get by, but that is all. Many businesses require college degrees. That is becoming more common as high school degrees become less meaningful. But, college does not get the same support as K-12 education. We used to be funded mostly by the state, but most public universities are funded at less than 50% by state funds, and some by as little as 30%. The rest of the money needs to be generated locally. I believe that higher education is important to the economy. If so, then it needs to get the public support. But, state budgets are strapped, so I don’t know where the money will come from. It is a problem with no easy answer.
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Oops.
I meant Lee, not Leo. ;)
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Danny,
Higher education is almost never addressed, neither by national nor state candidates. Several years ago, we had a governor who ran on the platform of “education governor.” However, this education governor slashed college funding in order to get money to pay for more K-12 programs. The general assumption that is made is that a college degree results in much higher earning potential, so college students should pay for their own college education on the basis of their future earnings. But, that reasoning is breaking down as the cost of going to college is outstripping the future earnings, particularly for older students returning to college. They won’t have enough years after college to recoup the cost.