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Bending the College Cost Curve
As politicians in Washington wrestle with trying to ‘bend the health care cost curve,” don’t you agree that equal or higher priority should be given to “bending the college cost curve?” As the parent of a current or future college student, what thoughts do you have about how this can be accomplished? Do you have ideas on how colleges could save money in their operations? Do you have suggestions on how financial aid dollars could be better distributed to help families?
Any and all thoughts are welcome, whether they are fully formed ideas or half-baked suggestions. Please click here to submit your views.
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 2:33 pm and is filed under College Costs.
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October 27th, 2009 at 9:47 am
The best way to bend the cost curve is to eliminate the anti-trust protections that colleges have, and acknowledge that these are profit-seeking businesses, not public service organizations, notwithstanding their “non-profit” cover story.
Since the government has authorized colleges to use a common standard for awarding aid, they do not have to compete on the basis of tuition costs or aid packages for the best students. This has two effects that drive up tuition. First, the lack of competition eliminates an incentive to keep tuition costs down. So how do they compete? With an arms race of facilities that turns college life into country club living, and with faculty and administrator salaries and benefits that have outpaced inflation for over a decade. Secondly, with unaffordable levels of tuition, colleges need the fig-leaf of financial aid to maintain their public service images. So they cost-shift from families receiving aid to those not eligible for aid. (They deny this and say that aid comes from a different pocket, but the revenue loss has to be offset somehow.) This further drives up the cost for those who are forced to pay the full list-price of tuition. If antitrust provisions were eliminated, the competition for students would hold prices down, and the cost pressures would force colleges to be innovative about cost control.
October 27th, 2009 at 9:54 am
The health-care issue and the price of tuition are intimately connected. Universities must increase tuition significantly to afford increases in health-care.
October 27th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
why can’t they just start with lowering the interest rate for student loans. They are reaping the harvest with interest and still increasing the cost – please someone higher up look at what these young adults are starting out their life with so much dept.
October 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
My youngest is a freshman at SUNY Geneseo. One of the “best buy” schools in the country as we were told. Best buy for New York State. SUNY convinced the brightest kids that it is a great school and my daughter does love it there but the classes are overcrowded and the tuition is increasing because of the problems the New York State government has with keeping it hands off the school budget.
SUNY Geneseo only gets 29 cents of every dollar we pay for tuition, room and board. My solution is to decrease the number of NY State elected officials and hire more college professors. SUNY Geneseo could also use a couple of builds, as classroom space is tight. I am sure if we could keep the state out of the SUNY cookie jar we would still have a savings at the end of the day.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I agree 100% with the comment of Sue / Oct 27, 2009, 3:23pm. These young adults are not even gainfully employed, and will have or have enormous debt, and stress. Let alone the continual cost of tuition increase, and cost of living in general for the students and parents.