In an article
that appeared this week in Chronicle of
Higher Education, Gary Fethke argued that college tuition is going up
because taxpayer support for higher education is going down. (Fethke, 2012). Although his essay discusses
economic theory on a sophisticated level, Professor Fethke’s argument can be
summarized in in the essay’s last sentence: “Students are required to pay more
in college tuition] because taxpayers are paying less—it’s that simple.”
Professor Fethke
is partly correct. Taxpayer support for
higher education has gone down as a percentage of total costs, and this
increase has contributed to higher tuition costs at publicly supported
universities. My own law school
experience illustrates the point. When I
attended law school at the University of Texas many years ago, tuition and fees
amounted to only $500 per semester. I
was able to put myself through law school by working part time as a law clerk
at the Texas Attorney General’s Office, and I graduated from UT Law School—one
of the top ranked law schools in the United States—with no debt. I will always be grateful to the people of
Texas for making this educational opportunity so affordable.
Today, of
course, UT Law School is not such a bargain. According to the law school’s web
site, tuition and fees now amount to more than $32,000 a year—32 times higher
than when I attended law school.
Inefficiency
Contributes to Rising Tuition Costs
Taxpayer support
for higher education has declined over the years as a percentage of total
costs, but this does not fully explain why higher education has gotten so much
more expensive, with costs going up every year at a rate higher than
inflation. Part of the problem lies in
the universities’ lack of efficiency.
I will provide one example from the first
university where I worked as a professor; let’s call it Generic
University. At the time I worked at GU,
the university required every doctoral-level class to have at least five
students. Otherwise the course was cancelled. One of my colleagues repeatedly
had low enrollments for his doctoral-level classes; and one semester, he could
not attract five students to enroll in either of his two courses. Consequently, both courses were cancelled
that semester, and the professor taught nothing at all.
At a
profit-driven institution, this development would have attracted some
attention. Supervisors would want to know why a particular professor’s classes
attracted so few students. Perhaps
someone would have asked questions about the professor’s overall productivity;
how many doctoral students was he supervising, for example? Undoubtedly, a
profit-driven enterprise would have taken some action to ensure that the
professor became more productive.
As it turned
out, the professor’s small classes were not only an indication of his lack of
popularity with students; they were a sign that enrollment was dropping in the
program as a whole. Yet GU administrators did little to reverse the decline in
enrollment during my years at the institution.
I think most
people who work in higher education can provide a similar example of
institutional inefficiency that was not addressed by university administrators.
Instead of becoming more efficient and keeping costs down, it has been easier for
university governing boards to simply raise the price of tuition. Consequently, students have been forced to
borrow more and more money every year in order to pursue a college degree. Today, postsecondary students borrow about
100 billion dollars annually; and total student-loan indebtedness is one
trillion dollars.
Of course,
inefficient faculty is but one part of the problem of escalating tuition
costs. University administrators have
enjoyed enormous salary increases in recent years, so that the spread between
faculty salaries and administrators’ salaries has grown wider and wider.
Colleges
Should Cap Tuition and Fees or Get Out of Federal Student Loan Program
As the economy
continues to sputter and college graduates struggle to find employment, the
rising cost of higher education in the United States has become an enormous
problem. The Obama administration has addressed this problem in various ways,
but tuition costs keep going up.
If the federal
government is really serious about rising tuition costs and rising student-loan
indebtedness, it can implement a simple solution that would go a long way
toward keeping tuition costs in better control
Congress could simply amend eligibility requirements for colleges and
universities to participate in the federal student loan program. Under the new rules, higher education
institutions would be required to freeze tuition and fees at their present
levels until the national unemployment rate drops below a certain level—let’s
say 6 percent.
If the federal
government would require colleges and universities to cap their tuition and
fees at the present level until the unemployment rate goes down, higher
education institutions would be forced to become more efficient. Currently,
universities are free to raise their tuition at will, permitting them to pass
of the cost of their inefficiency onto students and forcing students to borrow
ever larger amounts of money. A cap on
tuition and fees is the simplest and quickest way to deal with this
problem. College and universities that
are unable or unwilling to rein in their costs should be expelled from the
student loan program.
References
Fethke, G. (2012, April 1). Why does tuition go up?
Because taxpayer support goes down. Chronicle
of Higher Education.
