Controlling College Costs
By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Is there any hope that college costs can be controlled in the foreseeable future? If the past few decades are any indication, the answer would seem to be no. We have seen tuition and related expenses going from a point where many students paid their own way through college with their summer jobs and part-time work, to the current state of affairs, where most students leave college with expensive student loans to repay.
Many observers point to those loans as the cause of the problem. Colleges have encouraged students to take out these loans, and then used the money to build lavish dorms, student centers, gymnasiums, and recreational centers, thereby driving up the cost of going to college — necessitating more student loans.
The colleges will argue that without these building programs, they would not be able to attract students. There is probably some truth to that, since most colleges are selling themselves these days by pointing to their attractive campus life. But one cannot help but wonder if students would prefer a more Spartan college experience, one similar to that of students in the 1960s and earlier, with tuition and room and board payments that will not leave them tens of thousands of dollars in debt — if that option were presented to them.
Readers of this column over the age of 50 will remember an era when clean classrooms, competent professors, and a functioning gymnasium and student lounge seemed an adequate setting for earning a college degree.
Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, now president of Purdue University, has not gone so far as to require Indiana’s colleges to create a Spartan atmosphere. He has demonstrated that costs can be kept under control with less drastic measures. An editorial in USA Today on May 14 takes note of the problem Daniels confronted:
“College costs have risen so fast for so long — from about $1,600 a year at a four-year public college in 1973 to more than $18,000 in 2013 — that schools brag when tuition rises by less than the customary amount. Last fall, a trade group for private colleges crowed about a hike of 3.6 percent, in a time of dormant inflation. Public colleges and universities boasted that tuition and fees rose at ‘the slowest rate in over 30 years’.”
Daniels refuses to accept this state of affairs as the norm. He froze tuition at Purdue University after taking over as president in January 2013, and “will ask trustees to continue the freeze into a third year. In-state students will pay $10,000 through the 2015-2016 school year and out-of-staters $28,794.” Moreover, Daniels states publicly that it “turned out not to be terribly hard to do. Instead of asking our students’ families to adjust their budgets to our desired spending,” he required Purdue’s administrators to “adjust our spending to their budgets,” he told the USA Today Editorial Board.
The editors of USA Today applaud Daniels: “There was no secret sauce, just a little sensible pruning that would be ordinary in the business world but seems alien in much of academia, where a steady flow of federal aid guarantees a steady flow of students at seemingly any price. Never mind that they’re left mired in debt, much of which will never be repaid, burdening the students, their families, taxpayers, and the economy all at the same time.”
USA Today’s editors offered examples of Daniels’ cost-cutting. Purdue has “added higher-deductible health-care plans that save the school money and make employees more cost-conscious. It combined some administrative jobs and eliminated others.” That is all that it took. It does not seem too great a price to pay for three years of tuition freezes. If there are parents and students familiar with the situation at Purdue who disagree, we would welcome hearing from them.
On another topic: the proposal that college athletes be permitted to unionize discussed in the May 8 edition of this column. S.M. writes to offer a dose of common sense on this matter. He is convinced that posturing about “protecting college athletes” is not sufficient when considering this issue: “As we all ponder the impact of unionized college football, several questions come to mind. The legal issues are legion.
“What is the projected responsibility of the union that represents the players?
“Who pays the union?
“Does the union take responsibility for player behavior? Or is the player simply to be protected from his behavior?
“Will the union’s role go beyond negotiating for more/better scholarships and higher auxiliary payments? Their take, I assume, would be based on the sum of the two?
“Would the union attempt to secure rights to, or be prevented from securing, additional revenue from tickets, concessions, and parking?
“Would the union be responsible for part or all of the original scholarship?
“Would revenue from a bowl game be shared with players and the union?
“Would a player leaving a program in less than four years to turn professional be responsible to repay any or all of the scholarship money he has used?
“Would the union be held responsible in any way for the equal loss to the university’s program?
“Would a player successfully turning professional be required to pay anything to the union?
“Would the player be required to stay for the full term of the scholarship or to postpone his eligibility until his class graduates?
“A union is a dangerous third-party to be involved in negotiations, while assigned no financial, ethical, or legal responsibilities. I doubt that we will be asked to answer these questions, but they may belong in front of the athletes involved . . . assuming critical thinking still a capability.”
One final topic: the study of Latin, also discussed in this space on May 8, specifically the reference made in the British newspaper The Telegraph by grammarian Nevile Gwynne to an experiment conducted in Indianapolis. “There,” writes Gwynne, “400 11- year-olds were divided into two groups. Two hundred were taught the usual subjects — English, mathematics, history, geography, and so on. The other 200 spent less time on those ordinary subjects and did daily Latin instead.”
The results? Writes Gwynne, “Astonishingly, to anyone unaware of what learning Latin routinely does to the learner, those who did the Latin ended up much better in all the other subjects, including math and science, than the first group. Not merely a little better; much better, and this despite their having had significantly less time to spend on those other subjects. Our ancestors, generation after generation, knew exactly what they were up to.”
We asked our readers to weigh in on this matter. T.F.B of Los Angeles took us up on the offer. He suggests that we go slow in attributing the academic success of these students to the study of Latin. T.F.B. is not opposed to the study of Latin, but asks us to consider whether the success of the students studying Latin in Indianapolis may have a different cause: “I believe that the most important factor in the education of children is the interest and involvement of parents. It would be worthwhile to determine whether this influenced which 11-year-olds in Indiana were selected to study Latin. If so, it may explain why the Latin students did so much better in other subjects.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
