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.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA

How to Get $15M From Students in Your City

Now SCUPers can connect on Facebook and on LinkedIn.

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You don't have to work, study, or live in Pittsburgh to be aware of that city's mayor's proposal to institute a 1 percent fee on college and university tuition paid to institutions with campuses in Pittsburgh. This link should take you to the latest related news stories.

"There isn't an institution in this city in the last five years that hasn't raised tuition, and in each and every case, the tuition hike has been far greater than 1 percent," Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said. The city's proposed addition to the school bill "falls right in line with orientation fees, with transportation and security fees, with lab fees" and more nebulous charges that colleges could reconsider.".

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.

Why Aren't There More Poor Students at Rich Colleges?

US News & World Report has new data out on the numbers of poor students at rich colleges. The numbers are remarkably low. At least one analysis finds that well-qualified poor students have "sticker shock" and are unlikely to know how much financial aid they would qualify for at a rich school.

She found that low-income students who are qualified to attend selective schools
(based on their board scores and other measures) have a probability of applying
to such schools of just 8 percent. Once they apply, though, they’re likely to
get in and receive a generous financial aid package — and once they receive
their financial aid packages, they are very likely to enroll. But many such
students may be put off by sticker shock.
“A low-income student who applies
to Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton is not going to pay a dime,” she said,
“but it’s not clear whether that message gets out to them.”

Private College Tuition Increases for 09-10 Lowest in 37 Years

According to the annual tuition increase study done by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the average 4.3 percent increase in tuition for next year among private, nonprofit colleges and universities matches the lowest increase ever measured, in 1972-73, the first year the report was tabulated.

Read about it here:
http://www.naicu.edu/news_room/private-college-tuition-rises-at-lowest-rate-in-37-years


Related: NAICU has a reporting page on "Enhancing Affordability" which includes a "New Affordability Initiatives for the 1009-10 Academic Year" listing with links to campus examples of such things as tuition reductions, tuition freezes, partnerships with community colleges, one-year commuter options and others.

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/nacac

The 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.aspx

Colleges Scramble to Help Cash-Strapped Students

We guess that even a "cash-strapped" college has more liquidity than a cash-strapped student?

Facing job losses, dwindling college-investment accounts, and a tight credit market, students and parents have been streaming into financial-aid offices, asking for adjustments to their aid packages. Colleges are trying to help, but as the second semester starts up, some students have had no choice but to drop out or scale back the number of classes they're taking.

To expand financial aid, many colleges are cutting back on hiring, and construction projects are going on hold. Some institutions are getting creative on the fundraising front – think special appeals to alumni. Another tactic: Some colleges are offering leniency to students with unpaid balances.

School officials thought the trouble would hit this past fall. Instead, overall enrollments were "perfectly normal," says Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) in Washington. But now, he says, "people are apparently running out of steam."

Midyear departures are particularly disruptive. Schools create budgets based on enrollments for the year. And for students, "it's very hard, having done one semester, to then [temporarily stop or transfer] and not end up losing a lot of credits and a lot of time," Mr. Nassirian says.

Nearly a quarter of private colleges and universities and 13 percent of publics expect second-semester retention to be worse than last year's, according to a survey of 214 chief financial officers by The Chronicle of Higher Education and Moody's Investors Service.

Data Brings Sunshine: Research Publics Not Spending Money on Classroom Instruction

Even more interesting than the latest findings are some implications for the future:

The greatest value of the Delta Project’s report may yet to be realized. Leaders of the project, which is funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education, plan to create a Web-based function that will allow users to look at the spending and revenue data of individual institutions. While the raw data is already public through the federal data clearinghouse for higher education, known as the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the Delta Project hopes to create a function that adds context and meaning to the often dizzying IPEDS numbers.

Charles Miller, who chaired the U.S. Secretary of Education’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, said he welcomes the greater sunshine that the Delta Project is bringing to postsecondary education.

“Unless you have data that’s in this kind of form, it’s very hard to make decisions and policy judgments that are objective,” he said.

After reviewing the report, Miller said the Delta Project had made a data-driven case for reform, without having to use the sometimes tough language that’s found in many such reports, including the one Miller’s own commission presented.

“It doesn’t say ‘Here are the failings of the system,’ and a lot of the report is going to avoid doing that, but [Wellman] implies it,” he said.

The Doors That Claiborne Pell Opened

Beth Macy writes about the death of Claiborne Pell and the impact of Pell Grants on her own life:

I'm not rich now by any means. But on the night following Pell's death, I stared into my fireplace and wondered where I'd be without him: scrambling to pay my bills, like so many in my family? Stuck in a bad marriage or an addict?

The year I was born, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson wrote: "At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems — the answer for all the problems of the world — comes to a single word. That word is education." Call me corny, but it's a sentiment that still chokes me up.

As our president-elect talks about rebuilding national infrastructures and creating new technologies, I hope that Pell's promise of an established right to postsecondary education isn't forgotten. If new ideas are key to buoying our tanking economy, we need to first build an intellectual infrastructure to spark them.

With college tuition increasing at a rate more than double the rise in need-based aid, I have often wondered what would have happened if I'd tried to go to college 20 years later than I did. Ask my mom to cosign for a loan?

College Affordability: The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Anthony P. Carnevale explores some of the ways that he suggest are better ways to examine the issue of college costs:

A major flaw in the popular narrative on rising tuitions is the failure to distinguish public from private colleges. Tuition increases affect private and public colleges differently. Public enrollments are less affected by tuition increases because of their lower threshold prices. As tuitions rise, college enrollments shift from private colleges to the lower priced publics creating an increasing public funding burden, especially in recessions when families are looking for bargains. Private tuitions distort the data on rising tuitions as illustrated by this statistic: College tuition rates have risen more than 300 percent since 1987, when overall prices have only risen by a little more than 80 percent. Look closer and you will see that the big tuition increases come at the high-priced private institutions, not the public colleges. Tuition increases in public colleges have been relatively constrained and competitive. According to the College Board Trends in College Pricing survey in 2007, tuitions at four-year public colleges have risen by a little more than 50 percent in the last ten years and by about 20 percent in public two-year colleges – a far cry form 300%.

A deeper confusion stems from the fact that the dominant narrative on affordability fails to distinguish between college tuition and college cost. Tuition is the price that students and families pay for college. Cost is what colleges pay to educate students.

Wobbly Time for College Tuition

"For this academic year, the average sticker price of four-year colleges was up less than 1 percent over inflation, and financial aid was up about 5.5 percent over inflation in 2007-08." So, these two new reports from the College Board are good news! But according to this article there could also be some pretty bad news, too, possibly resulting in a reversal of those trends:

Based on what's happened in past recessions, tough budget periods are now anticipated at both public and private colleges. On the public side, at least 17 states have already handed down budget cuts to their higher-education systems, which "will likely mean tuition increases," says Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, a research and advocacy group in Washington. "Even the places where the governor is trying to protect higher education, they're still going to take a big haircut," she says.

Students Eye Cheaper Colleges as Crisis Deepens

As the semester goes on, we wonder how many students are looking at the next semester and wondering what the heck they're going to do. Generally, "back to school" is one of the options for people who lose their jobs, but in this climate, how viable is that option? This article suggests that more than half of high school students are looking at less prestigious schools than before, due to financial considerations:

For high school seniors like KC Martin of Englewood, Colo., even a four-year public university feels out of reach. She says she'll probably go to a community college, a decision she reached with her parents. "It's a tough one, because I want to go to a four-year school, but it's expensive," she says.

Community colleges typically swell during economic downturns, but with the financial crisis and the loss of state revenues, it will be daunting for some to accommodate what could be unprecedented demand, says Norma Kent, spokeswoman for the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington. Without funding to hire more faculty or build labs, "there's a de facto cap," she says, despite their mission to be accessible to everyone.

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.

Chief Business Officers Speak Out

This worthy read is subtitled "Four campus business leaders discuss daily and long-term challenges, from breaking down silos across campus to controlling tuition."

In it, one CBO, when asked "How do you keep peace between the business and academic camps on campus?" responded:

This is a biggy. You need to help them understand you are there to support their success. I need to do everything I can do to help them teach better—things as simple as making sure the classroom is clean, do they have the technology and equipment they need. If they see I’m doing everything I can to support their teaching, that goes a long way toward establishing trust. As the head of finance, I look at the world of opportunity rather than the world of scarcity. I’m always looking for creative revenue generation to support them—grants, advertising opportunities. When the faculty see you are doing everything you can to bring them the best learning environment, it goes a long way to establishing trust.

Lots of Action (or, at least news) About Student Loans

A few links from BuzzFeed:

• Harvard Ends Loans
• State Schools Should End All Loans
• Harvard's Altruism = Less I-Bankers
• Pomona Will Drop Loans, Too
• Yale Jumps On Harvard's Bandwagon
• Duke Joins The Rush
• Swarthmore Swaps Loans for Scholarship
• The Sudden Rush To Ease School Costs
• Williams Latest to Replace Loans
• Amherst College Using Endowments Instead Of Loans