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The cost of college keeps rising. No one has quite figured out a way to address this problem, though President Barack Obama earlier this year proposed vague sanctions on colleges that hike tuition excessively.
Or perhaps the country could just tackle the causes behind the tuition hikes. According to an article by Timothy Noah in The New Republic:
Where to start? I propose a voluntary moratorium on new construction on college campuses.
My inspiration comes from Ernest Davis, Patrick Deer, and Mark Crispin Miller, three NYU professors who, in an April 26 New York Times op-ed (“Expand Minds, Not the NYU Campus”), call on NYU to halt its planned $6 billion expansion. There are unique issues here involving historic preservation—NYU has been slowly wrecking the character of its Washington Square neighborhood for several decades—but Davis, Deer, and Miller also point out that since NYU doesn’t have a monster endowment, the new construction will be funded at least in part by loading up the university with more debt. That will mean higher tuition and more debt for NYU students, and it will also mean that NYU will further price itself out of reach for prospective and current students.
This is probably not a bad idea, but would it help? Well, perhaps a little.
But while new construction might be a particularly obvious example of higher education spending, it’s not really new construction (which is often bond issued and/or donor financed) that’s driving up the cost of college. It’s declining state funding. About 80 percent of American college students attend state colleges. At most institutions, in fact, tuition doesn’t pay for construction projects at all.
Noah acknowledges that not all higher education construction projects are wasteful. As he explains:
Is some of this new construction urgently necessary? No doubt. But if the president [of the United States] called for a voluntary moratorium on new university construction, he would empower state governments, local communities, and concerned faculty members… to press university administrators harder to justify their new projects. A voluntary moratorium would also give the federal government some running room to set up some longer-term procedures for imposing a mandatory moratorium down the line. Lots more needs to be done to control college costs. Curtailing runaway construction would be a good start.
Well perhaps. But it sounds here like university construction is just being used as a symbol of spending. Is it actually the cause? No doubt some construction is wasteful and unaffordable, but “empowering state governments… to press university administrators harder to justify their new projects” won’t make college any cheaper. This doesn’t sound like real thrift; it sounds like thrift theater.
State governments, frankly, already feel pretty well empowered to press university administrators to spend less money. It’s legislators’ unwillingness to spend more money on state colleges that cause the institutions to raise tuition.
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Sgt. Gym Bunny on April 26, 2012 3:51 PM:
Back in the day when I was at one geeked out college, they would always liken scaffolding to energy: it can neither be created nor destroyed, just moved from building to building... cluck! cluck!
boatboy_srq on April 26, 2012 4:26 PM:
I think Noah has it backward here. The problem isn't universities spending on construction when they should be lowering tuition/debt/whatever, it's cities/states spending money to put people to work and mortgaging their kids' educations to do it.
There's a danger here, exclusive to public higher ed, that the construction expense for the institution can be offset with goodwill (or at least lower resentment) from constituents in or affiliated with the construction industry. Whether the schools may need additional capacity or replacement facilities in the future may not be as relevant to the trustees (or the city/county/state) as whether the unemployed carpenters/masons/plumbers/electricians/et al need employment now.
This is almost certainly what's happening with Florida's FPU project: building a polytechnic, while shredding the technical programs at other schools, isn't sound education policy, but it makes all the builders happy for the moment.
John on April 26, 2012 4:28 PM:
I'm confused as to how lowered state funding can be responsible for the outrageous increase in the price of private colleges and universities.
Lowered state funding is obviously a problem, but surely there's a much broader cause for the vast increases in tuition, which happen everywhere, regardless of state funding.
critic on April 26, 2012 5:22 PM:
State funding has declined everywhere in the last 30 years. There are no states where declining state funding "doesn't apply."
Private colleges are impacted by this because the faster tuition increased at state schools rises the faster it can rise everywhere. Because state institutions are so ubiquitous they set standards for tuition hikes.
Texas Aggie on April 26, 2012 8:44 PM:
I've read another article that claimed that there has been a boom in university construction recently. That article seemed to think that this was unjustified, but it didn't address the fact that for years now, because of financial constraints, colleges and universities have been putting off maintenance and construction as their physical plants feel down around their ears. Sometimes you don't have a choice about whether you need to rebuild when your buildings are in danger of not passing the Fire Marshall's code.
Snarki, child of Loki on April 27, 2012 9:41 AM:
John:"I'm confused as to how lowered state funding can be responsible for the outrageous increase in the price of private colleges and universities."
Because state colleges provide a "public option" that competes with the private colleges on price. What we're seeing is what happens when higher-ed goes (essentially) 100% private: the price goes up until demand starts to slack off.
Just basic Econ 101.
Daniel on April 27, 2012 10:43 AM:
@Texas Aggie. "Unjustified" is debatable but you are right that universities have been putting off maintenance for years. One college administrator explained to me once that this is because, while it's always challenging to raise money, it's a lot easier to raise money for new construction than to keep buildings from deteriorating.
Sgt. Gym Bunny on April 27, 2012 10:53 AM:
@Texas Aggie: Very true. At the grad school where I work, they definitely went through a big, fat maintenance and renovation push over the past couple of years (refinished a roof, resurfaced the parking lot, modernized the restrooms, lecture rooms, and central air, etc.). I guess the logic is that when the school's future income starts looking iffy, you might as well take what money you have now and do what "needs" to get done now because the money might not be there in the future.