First of all, I want to apologize. I misrepresented the rise in the cost of a Columbia education. If one leaves aside the cost of room, board, and other fees, the rise in the cost of tuition in 2020 dollars between 1950 and the present day is not, as I stated 1200%. It is only 965%.
Why the enormous increase in real cost? It is not because
the education is significantly better. I think I can testify to that from
personal experience. In 1950 I was a freshman at Harvard and it is reasonable
to suppose that the educations provided by Harvard and Columbia were
comparable. 10 years later I was teaching at Harvard and I know from personal
experience that the education had not significantly improved – not any worse
you understand, just not any better. 10 years after that in 1970 I was teaching
at Columbia and again I can testify from personal experience that the education
we offered the undergraduates was as good as, but no better than, the education
I offered to Harvard students in 1960 or the education I received in 1950. 48 years later I returned to teach again at Columbia, and I found that the education was still as good as it had been in 1970. Indeed, since the centerpiece of the Columbia undergraduate education is a
course called Contemporary Civilization, or CC, and since that course has
existed since 1919 with changes, to be sure, but not really improvements,
students in 2020 receive an education not merely as good as that received by
students in 1950 but essentially the same.
So the product has not improved. What about the cost of
producing it? Well, leaving aside the natural sciences which require somewhat
more expensive equipment now than in 1950, or so I imagine, an undergraduate
education at Columbia or Harvard required then and requires now two things:
books and teachers. The books are not more expensive. What about the teachers? There again I can offer some personal experience by way of evidence.
In 1960, as a young instructor at Harvard, I was paid $6500
a year. That is, in today’s dollars, a bit more than $57,000. I do not actually
know for a fact but it is my impression that assistant professors at Harvard
today (I think they have gotten rid of instructors) in the humanities make
roughly twice that – not seven times that or nine times that, just twice that.
10 years later I was a newly promoted full professor at Columbia making $19,000
a year. That is $126,000 in today’s terms and although I am sure full
professors make more than that at Columbia today in the humanities, I would be
extremely surprised if they made as much is twice that.
So why the enormous increase in the cost of tuition? Well,
far be it from me to probe the motivations of the Columbia administration but
let me add one more bit of data by way of introducing a little light into this
murky subject. In 1950, roughly 2200 young men applied to Harvard for admission
(it was of course all men in those days). 1650 were admitted and 1250 showed up
to form the class of 1954. So if you were trying to get into Harvard in 1950,
you had a 75% chance of success and I rather guess that the figures were roughly
the same for Columbia.
Why do Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, and all the other
hotshot schools charge so much tuition?
Because they can.
I guess the question is, if the costs have not risen, where does the extra profit go? Could it be, however, that they enroll more students annually than they used to, and/or they have hired more professors to teach more students, or to offer more courses to the same number of annual admissions? Have they hired more administrators to administer the increased enrollment and/or increased number of available courses? What about maintenance costs – has the cost of whatever fuel they us to heat the buildings increased? Have they built more buildings which both increase the cost of maintenance and increase the costs of instruction? Do they need more janitors, custodians, cooks, etc.? Have donations decreased which requires an increase in tuition? If none of these explain the increase in tuition, then what are they doing with the extra profit? Investing it?
ReplyDeleteJust questions to which I have no answers. Nothing controversial from me today.
Professor Wolff: When you were an undergraduate and throughout many decades of your academic career, higher education was not regulated very much by local, state, and federal governments. This has changed, creating increased costs of compliance -- with environmental regs (especially expensive for scientific labs, waste management), employment regs covering benefits, etc. Colleges and universities that deferred maintenance back in the 1970s discovered to their dismay the considerable cost of this error. Buildings and grounds must be maintained if only to prevent the much higher cost of not doing so. In addition, students and their parents expect to see a well-maintained campus. Then there is the cost of computer technology and of support staff for it. Legal costs have increased, e.g., creating and enforcing conflict-of-interest policies for trustees, college officers, purchasing agents, and faculty. Our colleagues who sexually harass students and other employees cost the institution a lot of money. Harvard-style budgeting (each college "floats its own tub") means no subsidies from profit centers like law school. Human subjects and animal subjects research are accountable to federal and state regulations, as is cell biology research (e.g., preventing environmental damage from biological agents). Then add soaring costs for healthcare insurance. Then add the imperative of all bureaucracies to grow. Oh yes, faculty some time ago gave up student advising, which also become complex enough to require employees trained to make sure that students' course planning will result in them graduating with six years (ideally four). With dwindling applicant pool, the cost of recruiting each entering class has increased. (I recall a piece somewhere recently that one college spent $7500 per admitted student on recruitment, politely now known as enrollment management.) Finally, we Americans (Texans, too) do not trust other people with our money; hence the bureaucracy that watches over all expenditures.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget that the massive influx of Federal loan dollars has given colleges and universities a perverse incentive to keep raising prices. Why not, after all, since the loan dollars keep increasing as well?
ReplyDeleteEducation is a ticket to the privileged classes- so the price for the payoff has shot up.
ReplyDeleteIt is the same with Stuyvesant- people go there not out of love for education but to save a seat for them at the party of the privileged classes- the so called American dream
I suspect theres more going on- that's a big part of it
I think that people put career and economic prospects ahead of life and learning because there is less life out there- the profit motive has squeezed out the intrinsic factor
Larry McCullough's succinct account makes what seems to me to be the key points. I would additionally draw attention to the ideological and political context. I was told at a union-training session a decade ago that tenure had declined yearly from its high point in 1979. The ways in which a mobile cadre of 'bureaucrats' took control of higher education, and the predictable results of the take-over, were described around the same time in Benjamin Ginsberg's The Fall of the Faculty. From my marginal and perhaps highly idiosyncratic perspective in the past quarter of a century, the most striking ideological feature of the take-over was the exhibition of a feature to which Chomsky, David Graeber, and others have drawn attention: the managerialist elite would rather fail than grant any power to the teachers. This was really driven home by the enormous efforts and money spent by administrators in fighting adjunct and graduate student unionization. Anecdotally: the financially precarious San Francisco Art Institute spent around $200,000 to get rid of me in 2008-2010; and I was told by an insider that they spent around $900,000 a few years later in a failed attempt to thwart adjunct unionization. The school collapsed this year, but the top administrators made of with literally millions of dollars. Still, the points that Mr. McCullough makes about legal costs and the wages of bureaucratization probably account for a great deal of the increase. And as Prof. Wolff insists, it's reasonable to think that the quality of the education is roughly the same, insofar as such a statement admits of evidence.
ReplyDeleteIn the Fall of 1960, I began my first year at the University of Chicago Law School. Tuition was $1,050 per year. I had a scholarship that covered tuition and thought—mistakenly—that I had saved enough money to live on. It became apparent to me that I didn’t have nearly enough and would need to find a part time job. First year students were not permitted to work without permission from the Dean of Students, so off I went to get permission.
ReplyDeleteThe Dean would not give me permission, but came up with alternative: I could take my scholarship in cash and a student loan for tuition, and that’s what I did for three years. I still didn’t have enough to live on, so I worked part time (not very hard) during my second and third years.
In 1960, the median household income in Chicago was $7,287. A year’s tuition, therefore, was about 15% of that median income.
Today, the median household income in Chicago is $63,353. Tuition the Law School, according to Google, is $61,600—97% of that median income.
The Law School was an excellent school, then and now. Today it has Brian Leiter, the Karl Llewellyn Professor of Law. In 1960 it had Karl Llewellyn himself—the most unforgettable teacher I ever had. Leiter is a far more serious philosopher of law than Llewellyn, but I’d bet that even he would say that he isn’t six times better.
So what gives?
Have not had time yet to properly absorb the comments.
ReplyDeleteJust two quick points. First, I am surprised to see that Prof Wolff says "the books are not more expensive" than in 1950, since that is obviously wrong. Books of all sorts are much more expensive, though that of course cannot account for the large increase in tuition.
Second, on whether or not "the product" has improved, i.e., the education has improved. Actually it probably has in some (not all) respects, though again this doesn't account for the tuition increase. Teaching methods are likely somewhat more varied, and there is probably more, though still not yet enough, emphasis on pedagogy and approaches to it. (Did Harvard have a Center for Teaching and Learning in 1950? Almost certainly not. Not, I think, until the last 20 years or so, perhaps a tad longer. Even if 50 percent of what it does is b.s., the other 50 percent may be useful.)
And obviously there have been curricular changes and expansions, which the OP is too dismissive about, it seems to me. Not all of these have amounted to improvements, but some may have. But I don't have time to get into this further right now.
Re Larry McCullough:
ReplyDelete1) "faculty some time ago gave up student advising"
Depends on the place and the kind of advising. My impression is that faculty at Harvard, and probably Columbia too (the two schools mentioned in the OP), do some advising.
2) "dwindling applicant pools"
True for a lot of places, not for some others (e.g., the two mentioned in the OP).
John Rapko,
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that you raised the point about the decline in tenure and the ascendance of administrators. I spent this week-end preparing a complaint for filing in a New Jersey state court tomorrow requiring a public university in New Jersey to show cause why it failed to give a tenured professor an evidentiary hearing before an Administrative Law Judge before issuing a 30-day suspension without pay to the professor on Friday. Under the N.J. Teachers Tenure Act, the suspension without pay clearly required such a hearing before the suspension without pay was imposed, and the university in question has violated the statute, and I and my N.J. co-counselor fully expect the court to issue a show cause order to the university, as well as an injunction preventing the suspension to take effect (scheduled to begin tomorrow). What is arguably shocking – but perhaps not shocking – is that the university would take its action with full knowledge that they were violating the law. What is more, the professor knew that she would get no help from her union, which has allowed the university for years to violate the rights of the professors’ contract rights for years, with impunity. My client sent an email to the union Friday night resigning from the union.
The university has been harassing this tenured professor for three years now, knowing that they could find no way to legally terminate her under the Tenure Act. So they have charged her with violating a N.J. policy, titled The New Jersey Policy Prohibiting Discrimination In The Workplace, a policy which in effect codifies the use of politically correct speech and disciplines public employees in N.J.. including up to termination, if their speech is deemed to violate the Policy (e.g., in the case of the professor in question, she was deemed to have violated the Policy by mentioning (not using) the word “Negro” in her classroom, a term once considered appropriate but which has now gone out of vogue, and which some regard as demeaning. But to discipline an older professor for mentioning (not using) the term? The union has proved totally ineffectual in standing up to the university, while the university has expended enormous sums of money and expenditures of time in an effort to force the professor to resign, which she has steadfastly refused to do. I and my co-counsel are also challenging the constitutionality of the Policy in federal court, maintaining that it violates the 1st Amendment free speech right of all N.J. public employees. The Attorney General of N.J. is defending the Policy in federal court.
"Just two quick points. First, I am surprised to see that Prof Wolff says "the books are not more expensive" than in 1950, since that is obviously wrong. Books of all sorts are much more expensive, though that of course cannot account for the large increase in tuition."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely.
You used to be able to go to the college bookstore and get all your books used for 10 bucks or whatever. Now all the texts get updated every single year just enough to ensure that you need to buy new instead of used...and are $50-$100 in a lot of classes. On top of that they typically have some sort of online access that may include another fee.
It's not just the most elite schools where costs have risen so much. I daresay that the tuition at most private four-year colleges is at or above $40,000 today. Comprehensive feeds (including room & board, etc., are at $55,000 or higher at almost all of the nationally ranked liberal arts schools).
ReplyDeleteSome of the really big picture changes that come to mind are:
* the professionalization of student affairs & services (faculty used to serve in roles that today are filled by residence life staff: dean of students, residence hall director, etc., or the roles simply didn't exist)
* the professionalization and rising costs of athletics (few institutions make money on athletics, which serve mainly as a way of drawing in student-athletes; at many institutions faculty used to double as coaches)
* the expansion of other areas of administration (information technology, human resources, etc.)
* the much higher costs of healthcare and insurance for employees
* the costs of servicing traditional pensions, for those who are lucky enough to have them (few institutions fully funded them)
David Y
ReplyDeleteI can't see those items justifying a 600 or so percent increase in tuition. I suspect that one reason for the huge increase is, as another poster has noted, the open endedness of the student loan program, which simply lets schools charge what they want. Another might be the prestige factor: If X charges $50K then Y doesn't want to charge less because that could be seen as admitting that a Y education isn't as good as an X education. Instead of competing for who can charge the least, the reverse is the dynamic.
this was helpful:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/5/4/15547364/baumol-cost-disease-explained
If this is true, and I have no reason to doubt you, it is absolutely damning.
ReplyDeleteThe advances in pedagogical science, and the very extensive evidence that supports them, should mean that any education offered today is very much better than what was offered twenty or more years ago.
Unfortunately, not nearly enough academics or universities have truly embraced these advances: we still lecture - and probably delude ourselves that we are compelling orators - and, hopefully, teach seminars, which are nonetheless of very varying quality, often being no more than a running commentary by the seminar leader, interspersed with questions or observations from two or three of the more voluble students. No serious effort is made to discern what learning has happened ex post facto. The relationship between the learning activities and the assessments is shaky at best.
I can think of no profession less interested in advances that would improve their performance than academia. And I think the situation in worst in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). In the natural sciences, some leading scholars are restructuring their courses around proven approaches like problem-based learning. (https://www.nature.com/news/why-we-are-teaching-science-wrong-and-how-to-make-it-right-1.17963). Anecdotally, few HSS scholars are doing so.
I regularly come across fellow social scientists who dismiss these advances out of hand. When you think about it, the arrogance of this is incredible and almost certainly mere defensive avoidance. We owe it to our students to upskill ourselves in what is, after all, perhaps our most impactful activity.