Let's all sing along..."We need to raise their salaries to be competitive with other first-rate universities..."
Here in Michigan --
The University of Michigan has a $5.7+ billion endowment, which is growing at more than 15% annually. Tuition was raised an average of 5.8% last year. That means that the the endowment will double every 5 years, and tuition double ever 12 years if I do my math right.
Its poor cousin to the northwest, Michigan State, gets by with $1.325 billion growing at 21%, and raised its tuition by 8.4% last year. That means that the endowment will double every 3 1/2 years, and tuition double ever 9 years or so.
If a place like U of M is doing that well, then why are tuition costs going up by 2x, 3x, or even 4x the inflation rate?
A favorite passtime for the left is calculating the ratios of CEO salaries to the lowest pay given to the "workers" in their companies. Has anyone done this for major university presidents?
Solution: Go to another school. Screw 'em. Lets see how long they can pay their own salaries.
I guess that's just too simple a solution. Some people will shop at the same store no matter what price they charge.
Sadly, colleges have the same pricing issues as hair stylists and condom makers -- people believe that "the more expensive, the better the product." Colleges that keep their tuitions low tend to lose students for this very reason.
Locally we have a community college whose graduates include one astronaut and any number of MDs, DOs, dentists, Ph.D's, etc. The class work transfers, grades and all, to the University of Michigan and Michigan State, which means that the class experience is roughly the same. However, we lose students to the "snob effect" all the time, with students sneering at the community college even if it means an extra $40,000 in debt later on.
Please let me speak as someone who has been to college four times. College is increasingly worthless. The classes I took in 1974 at American University had rigor and depth. The classes I took at the University of Oregon in 1984 were well taught, for the most part, although there was a trend toward grade inflation. The classes I took in 1996 to get my teaching certificate were laughable in their simplicity. The graduate course I took at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks last year was ideogical garbage taught by a person whose apparent qualifications were left-wing bias and hatred against white men. Guess where I paid the most per credit?
Students sometimes come to me and ask about college. I warn them about the ideologues and the waste of money.
All this makes me appreciate Milton Friedman and the concept of using free-market thinking to drive quality education. However, right now, the colleges are elite institutions, not unlike the monasteries of the Middle Ages. I think our grandchildren will consider things like gender studies in the same way we think about clerics arguing about how many angels dance on the head of a pin. Time for a Reformation, eh?
Our youngest daughter goes to ISU (IL State Univ), and two years ago we got a letter that tuition was going up 10% because of 'added health care costs for the staff'.
In English that meant the gay and lesbian 'staff' was going to get medical insurance coverage for their homo 'lovers'.
(Thank God this is her last year there)
bump for publicity