From today’s Marquette News Briefs email:
Marquette strives to help students discover their full potential in all areas of their lives – intellectually, socially and spiritually. Providing these opportunities requires a significant investment. Marquette works hard to raise funds and control costs to provide an excellent education that is as affordable as possible. Through their donations, alumni, parents, friends, corporations and foundations help the university fund the difference between tuition and the actual cost of educating a Marquette student.
I appreciate that a college education is a costly endeavor. I know Marquette works hard to raise lots of money. I also know that Marquette does have a task force dedicated to rooting out unnecessary spending and finding cost savings, and I applaud them for that.
To continue to provide truly excellent academic programs that are grounded in the Catholic, Jesuit tradition, to recruit and retain the highest quality faculty and staff, to maintain a safe and appealing campus environment and to offer students opportunities to explore and discover all they can be, the Marquette Board of Trustees approved the following tuition, room and board and fee schedules for 2007-08:
I suppose there are those who would argue the “truly excellent” part, and the “grounded in the Catholic, Jesuit tradition part,” and the “highest quality faculty” part, and the “safe campus environment part,” and the “student opportunities” part, but no one can argue that we have an appealing campus environment – the folks who led the Campus Beautification Committee all deserve huge Gold Stars.
* A tuition increase of $1,600 a year for full-time undergraduate students;
* An average room and board increase of approximately $760 for the year;
That’s a 6.5% increase in tuition over last year and a 18% increase (about) in room and board.
The Consumer Price Index increased 2.5% in 2006. In midsized urban areas in the Midwest, it rose just 1.6%.
The education and communication subcatergory increased 2.3%. That’s deceptive, though – communication actually declined slightly, while education increased significantly: “During the 12 months ended in December, educational costs rose 6.3 percent, largely as a result of a 7.0 percent rise in the index for college tuition and fees.”
According to FinAid.org:
A good rule of thumb is that tuition rates will increase at about twice the general inflation rate. During any 17-year period from 1958 to 2001, the average annual tuition inflation rate was between 6% and 9%, ranging from 1.2 times general inflation to 2.1 times general inflation. On average, tuition tends to increase about 8% per year. An 8% college inflation rate means that the cost of college doubles every nine years.
So Marquette is about on average, perhaps slightly below average, with college tuition increases nationwide, but college tuition increases nationwide are double inflation. Something must be up:
Richard Vedder is director of the Center on College Affordability and a professor of economics at Ohio Universty. He offers a stunning and accurate indictment of American higher education:
-The non-profit nature of most institutions means that there are few incenÂtives to cut costs or improve product quality.
-Price discrimination means that universities set high sticker prices, and then discount them a lot to favored customers, hurting those not favored.
-There is no bottom line in higher education, no metric like profits to determine whether easily understood goals are being met.
-High public supÂport means artificially increased demand for higher education has increased prices.
-Ownership means that many persons claim that they own the univerÂsities, and governance and consequences of bad management are murky.
-Cross-subsidization means that at many instiÂtutions, graduate instruction, research and/or athletics are highly subsidized by undergraduate programs.
-Rent-seeking means that some people, especially senior administrators and faculty, have had huge compensation increases that increase costs.
-Governance means that it is unclear who really runs the universities: the president, the trustÂees, the faculty, rich alums, etc.
-Resource rigidities such as tenure make it difficult to redeploy resourcÂes to more efficient uses. -Barriers to entry imposed by accrediting associations and others restrict comÂpetition and hurt needed and efficient for-profit providers, while, at the same time, schools seek prestige by denying students access.
-Information means that people have no idea whether universiÂties are doing a good or bad job of adding value to student consumers, as there is no bottom line, renÂdering markets less efficient because the customers are in the dark far more than necessary.
-In additional to these problems, there is a lot of neglect of students going on in universities as an unintended consequence of all this.
How true that all is! We see it here at Marquette: scholarship resources are targeted to favored students based on classification, goals from strategic plans are simply dumped, students are excluded from governance, University-wide financial information is held quite closely, etc.
Only eight of the 62 private universities listed in US News and World Report’s top 120 schools have lower tuitions than Marquette. Marquette ranks 17th among the 28 Jesuit institutions of higher education for total tuition and mandatory fees.
Certainly the Administration deserves credit for keeping our costs lower than other schools (though some of this may be attributable to the Midwest’s low cost-of-living).
But the question is Who do we compare ourselves to? Is the other Jesuit schools the most appropriate comparison?
Certainly some students only look at Jesuit schools, and find Marquette comparatively affordable. But I would contend most students are comparing Marquette to a state school – often UW, or Minnesota, or Illinois. In-state tuition and fees at UW-Madison this year: a measly $6,730. At Urbana-Champaign: $9,966. UWM-Twin Cities: $9,410. Even for out of state students, tuition at all three institutions is lower. And at the other schools in those public systems, tuition is even lower.
Unfortunately, lost to history when our archives were deleted was my post: The Jesuit Special Sauce. I basically argued we’re like state schools in many respects – we have TAs who can’t speak English that teach classes, we have professors more interested in research than teaching, and we have very large lecture halls for huge classes. Thus, there must be some Jesuit Special Sauce, or some particular Marquette Magic, that draws students here…
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Costs are up… particularly in administrator salaries… notice how the tuition will go up and maybe a few months later you’ll find out someone got a raise or someone new was hired, or some new great program was adopted. Always a reason…
6.5% is pretty light… in the UW tuition was raised significantly… try 68% in 4 years.
Lest we forget, it is about supply and demand, folks. This is nothing new.
Comments regarding your highlights from the Ohio U. prof:
1. As a non-profit, Universities tend to not operate in the red. According to Fr. Wild’s State of the Unviersity, Marquette does not, which is a good thing. A “loss” to a non-profit is a decrease in net assets, which not only decreases assets available for investment (i.e., endowment), but also decreases the return on those assets in perpetuity (i.e., the cash flow they receive from investing their endowment). So this guy’s comments about non-profits not caring about the bottom line doesn’t really hold water in reality. You better believe Marquette needs to operate in the black (i.e., have an increase in net assets), especially since it wants to increase its endowment.
2. I find it very hard to believe that demand for a spot in a Marquette freshman class is artifical. Just look at the growth of applications – some 10 – 12k for 2,000 spots. There is nothing artificial about that (you should also look at the corresponding improvement in test scores of students the University accepts).
Comments in general:
1. Daniel, I wish you had the archives. I was much more eloquent in my arguments about the Jesuit special sauce. Something along the lines of how the UW System in particular is partially state funded (the figure $29 ml sticks out in my head for some reason).
2. Daniel, your posts are often the most poignant and clear of any arguments/comments on this site. One can clearly see you’re going to be an excellent attorney. Obviously, you must have drank the Marquette Kool-Aid based on what kind of education you have/are received/receiving. The answer regarding the Jesuit Special Sauce is whatever you believe it to be. You’ll understand when you’re done with school. There is something very special down that stretch of Wisconsin Avenue on the west end of Downtown Milwaukee.
How is that related to Supply / Demand? Tuition goes up because they need more money, its simple. The reason they need the money could be debated…
Tuition goes up because more people want to go to Marquette (demand) for a relatively fixed amount of spaces (supply). Couple that with increased operating costs (salaries/benefits/occupancy) and its easy to see why Marquette raises tuition.
The increases in salary that i have experienced in the 43 months in the workforce have outpaced those of the tuition increases at Marquette between Academic year 99-00 through 02-03.
It’s all relative.
Lets play apples and oranges again.
Marquette is a private school, and comparing it to UW or Illinois PUBLIC tuition is as ignorant as it gets.
Compare it to Harvard, Pepperdine or Yale next ime.
not seeing the connection… I don’t see a major influx of people wanting to go to Marquette compared to years prior. Most universities are good at keeping the same amount of acceptance and overall application rates year to year.
If you had worked a little higher in high school or had a higher ACT or SAT score, Daniel, you might have been able to get into Wisconsin or Illinois. Marry well and your kids might have a shot. As for Minnesota, if you got into Marquette you could likely have gone to Minnesota, which is viewed as the “safety school” for Milwaukee-area high school students who want the Big Ten experience.
spet3r, the amount of applications in the last three years compared to the three application years when I attended is double digit percentage growth. 12,000 applications per year is, in my opinion, a huge influx of people wanting to go to Marquette. That number is more than the current graduate and undergraduate population.
You may not see a major influx because, assuming you are a student, the classes that come in remain relatively the same size.
It should be noted that a lot of what the U Ohio professor is implicitly advocating for is a free-market approach or strategy to managing a University, which might not be suitable in this circumstance. The “product” that a University tenders is the Diploma, the value of which is intrinsically tied to the intellect and skills of an individual. The diploma isn’t tangible and doesn’t have a lifespan, nor can it be backed by a warranty of sorts. So can the “production” of a diploma be managed my a free-market-esque structure? I don’t believe it should. Rather, the university needs to concentrate more effectiveness rather efficiency; a trade school like DeVry is cost-efficient, a University like, in your case, Marquette is effective (I attend St. John’s in New York). With that being said, I believe the reason for such exorbitant costs can be attributed to federal funding, and less-so to other causes. Federal funding has expanded the market for many Universities, unnaturally affording a far larger number of less-qualified people an opportunity to go to college. I think most people know this argument, so I won’t have to delve into the particulars…