What If College Is Not For Everyone?
 At a time when many in higher education leadership, like the Lumina Foundation, among others, are calling for change to graduate more and more students with degrees, others are focusing for the moment on the question: What if a college education just isn't for everyone? " It's fine for most kids to go to college, of course, (but) it is not obvious to me that that is the best option for the majority," says Mike Gould, founder of New Futures, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that provides scholarships for low-income students pursuing anything from a four-year degree to a massage-therapy certification. "Some education may be a good thing or it may just be a lot of debt." The problem, Gould and others say, is that many high schools focus so much on college that low-achieving students fall through the cracks. A Public Agenda report this month raises similar concerns about high school guidance counseling. It follows up on a December survey that concluded most young workers who don't have a college degree "are in their jobs by chance, not by choice," and that guidance toward a career path "is hardly clear and purposeful."
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: - March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
- April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
- April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"
Labels: access, affordability, costs, learning, matriculation, value
In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt
Peter S. Goodman, In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt, The New York Times: One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools . . . But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: - March 24–26: Cambridge, MA - "Strengths and Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats"
- April 5–7, San Diego, CA - "Smart Planning in an Era of Uncertainty"
- April 7, Houston, TX - "Sustaining Higher Education in an Age of Challenge"
Labels: costs, for-profit, recession, two-year college, workforce development
Raise Tuition and Enrollment Both, Now?
Please note that this blog entry may or may not be further fleshed out than what you see right now.The intensity of the protests in California also raises questions about why officials there did not make the less difficult decision of maintaining or increasing enrollments without raising tuition fees, or raising them modestly. This is a strategy that more public and institutional officials across the country and around the world should consider as they deal with continuing shortfalls in public funding for higher education. Arthur M. Hauptman argues that public institutions should examine carefully the option of increasing enrollments and raising tuition rather than holding tuition steady and capping enrollments. He examines four options: Capping enrollments and cutting sosts; Changing the mix of enrollments; Increasing tuition fees for existing students; and Increasing enrollments while maintaining current tuition fees. Follow this link to more information.
Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring: Labels: costs, enrollment, financial crisis, recession, tuition
Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access
So, law school tuition just goes up and up. Why? View a Chronicle report by Eric Kelderman (the quote below is from the Chronicle) and the full GAO report here (PDF). Critics have sometimes blamed the accreditation standards of the American Bar Association for driving up the cost of law school and making it more difficult for students of color to be admitted to those programs.But a report released on Monday by the Government Accountability Office says that most law schools surveyed instead blamed competition for better rankings and a more hands-on approach to educating students for the increased price of a law degree. In addition, the federal watchdog agency reported that, over all, minorities are making up a larger share of law-school enrollments than in the past, although the percentage of African-American students in those programs is shrinking. The GAO attributed that decrease to lower undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on law-school admissions tests. Labels: accessibility, accreditation, costs, law school, tuition
Leading Indicators Provide a Peek at the Fall Admissions Story
A NACAC study shows that students have more interest in public schools, including community colleges, than before the financial crisis. Despite the challenges this presents for admissions staff, they're getting their budgets cuts at public (46 percent of schools) and at privates (30 percent of schools). Read about it here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/09/nacacThe top link is to the Inside Higher Ed story, this one is to the full report: "Effects of the Economy on the Admission Process, 2008-09, National Association for College Admission Counseling June 2009": http://www.nacacnet.org/AboutNACAC/PressRoom/2009/Pages/EffectsoftheEconomy.aspxLabels: access, admissions, affordability, costs, enrollment, NACAC, tuition
Budget Cuts & Cannibalization
Titled, "The Mote in Thy Brother's Eye," this Inside Higher Ed blog post examines some of the wasteful ways in which wasteful things (eye of the beholder) are cannibalized, or not when institutions do drastic budget cutting. The possibly wasteful use of tax dollars to support too many institutions is a popular theme, yet the definition of waste is often relative to the self-interest of the observer. It is a waste to spend money on a community college or a small liberal arts college from the perspective of the research-intensive university because flagship institutions may see their mission as more important to the state than the missions of other institutions. However, from the perspective of the students and communities where these other institutions operate, flagship universities are a wasteful luxury that exist to support major entertainment industries like football and coddle research professors who teach very little and whose discoveries end up nurturing the industries of the Northeast, the West Coast, or boom states of the Southwest.
These charges and counter charges often occur in whispers because the political sensitivity of targeting any particular institution is great. If the HBCU's are untouchable for a host of historical and equity reasons, or if small rural institutions are protected by political influence, then an assault on other institutions elsewhere in the state will not be seen as fair. In addition, the issue of cost is more complicated that it might appear. If the state closes a relatively small institution in a semi-rural area and fires the faculty and staff, we can indeed save money. Labels: costs, financial crisis, resource and budget planning
Cut-Rate Campus in New Hampshire
Wow. It seems like a bargain for students in New Hampshire. They can go to the Southern New Hampshire University's main campus for tuition of $25k or they can attend at the satellite campus in Salem for only $10k a year. No Olympic-sized pool, no rotating climbing wall, no 46,800-square foot food court. SNHU plans another satellite, and the State of Pennsylvania is considering some similar plans. Some say that it looks like "reinventing community college." So what does $10,000 - comparable to tuition and required fees at a state school - buy? A full load of prescribed introductory courses in English, math, psychology, and history, intimate classes of fewer than 10 students, and built-in office hours with professors, so students don't drop out. The only amenities at the Salem satellite: computer labs, vending machines, and a lounge with a stack of magazines and a chess board. "It's not the mainstream college experience, but it helps keep your sights focused on your work," said Matthew Gambardella, an 18-year-old business major who commutes 40 minutes from his parents' home in Peabody.
Labels: affordability, campus planning, costs, cut-rate campus, financial crisis, no frills campus, satellite campus
Performing to Make Money—Making Money to Perform
John V. Lombardi writes about the "endless Sisyphean task of explaining university finances to many audiences" and works hard to describe the difference between the "business model" and the "university model." Universities are indeed business enterprises, we can explain. They earn and spend money, they produce and sell a wide array of products, and they compete for student customers and high quality faculty employees. They produce teaching and research, they require students and faculty, and they judge their performance on the quality work both perform. Most people in our audiences will recognize all this as more or less appropriate and right. Then we come to the money. Universities, we can tell them, are revenue engines with a business model fundamentally different from our corporate colleagues. The business world constructs enterprises to produce and sell products or services with the goal of making money. A successful business earns a profit that it distributes to its owners. The business measures its success by the amount of money (or value) created for its stockholders or owners. This is simple. If the business cannot make the product and sell it for a profit, it stops making that product and makes a different one that it can sell at a profit, because the point of the exercise is the profit not the product. In the university however, we do something different. We engage in an intense and focused search for money so we can produce teaching and research (with all of its associated benefits). The more money we can generate the more and the better teaching and research we can do. The purpose of the money is to purchase quality teaching and quality research and support a quality university environment. We compete with each other not to make a profit but to acquire quality. We define the successful university by the total amount of quality it can accumulate (demonstrated by its products) within its boundaries.
Labels: business model, costs, financial crisis, resource and budget planning
The Iron Triangle: College Presidents Talk about Costs, Access, and Quality
From the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and Public Agenda, comes this late 2008 report. The structure of the introduction tells you something about the contents of the report: "Higher education in changing times"; "Are we headed for dialogue or for stalemate?"; 'A missing pre-condition for dialogue"; "An investment worth paying for"; "Are you listening to us?"; "A dangling conversation?"; "Expected and unexpected views." Three key insights emerged from these conversations—one expected, the other two less so. The first is that, as one might have anticipated, our respondents were incredibly thoughtful, informed, and articulate; they drew from a wide range of experience from their own institutions, from other institutions where they had served, and from their participation in national and regional professional associations. The second factor, initially less anticipated, is that none of them was the least surprised by our questions. Indeed, we began each interview by asking the respondents to list his or her issues of greatest concern. For the most part, the presidents began by listing some version of our three main topics: college costs, access, and quality. In some cases, the presidents even conducted parts of the interview for us, following up their own statements by saying, “But you will probably ask me…” The third observation is that there was a great deal of commonality in the way the presidents perceived the issues. Just as it’s possible to put a number of photographs together to create a composite picture, the college presidents’ responses—taken together—can be summarized by a composite view. While few of the presidents would wholeheartedly agree with all of this composite (and some would endorse very little of it), most of the presidents we interviewed resonated with much of it. Labels: academic leadership, access, assessment, costs, policy, president, presidents, quality
Beyond the Sticker Shock 2008: A Closer Look at Canadian Tuition Fees
This is a recent Educational Policy Institute monograph (PDF). To be cited as: Usher, Alex, and Duncan, Patrick (2008). Beyond the Sticker Shock: A Closer Look at Canadian Tuition Fees. Toronto, ON: Educational Policy Institute. Worth a read if you'd like to understand that costs and tuition look like in Canada. In 2006 the Educational Policy Institute released the first edition of ‘Beyond the Sticker Price: A Closer Look at Canadian University Tuition Fees’. The report presented a new way by which to look at the prices and costs associated with university tuition, an alternative to the annual tuition fee report produced by Statistics Canada which more accurately reflects what students and their families actually pay in tuition fees once all various subsidies are taken into account.
The purpose of this paper is to build upon the research and analysis conducted for this paper’s original release. This paper will present available data from a ten year period from 1997‐98 to 2007‐08 and look at real changes in tuition fees, educational tax credits and tax rebate programs over that period. Of particular importance in this paper is the effect of the introduction of new tax rebate programs in four provinces since the last report. These programs have reduced the net cost of education substantially, particularly in Manitoba and New Brunswick. This new data will permit us to generate some alternative calculations of net tuition which are substantially more accurate as measures of cost than the simple tuition fee data. These measures, in turn, will permit us to see precisely how changing government policies on education tax credits and programs are affecting the people who receive them. Labels: Canada, costs, tuition
HR Horizons: Curbing Health-Care Costs
Volume 3, Issue 2 of this Web publication from NACUBO is available on line. It contains useful information about how institutions are cutting health-care costs, especially by turning to wellness and fitness programs, as well as by using other techniques. Among other topics, Duke University's Prospective Health program and Rollins College's 100 percent coverage of preventive care. Even if this does not fit into the scope of your professional responsibilities, or your personal interests, you should ensure that those on your campus who do address these issues are aware of this publication. Labels: costs, health, human resources, wellness
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