It's really math. Government gives the school dollars. This lowers tuition that students have to pay. When budget cuts hit schools, tuition went up (not down). This is particularly true at state schools.
A new study from the New York Federal Reserve shows declining state and local financial support for public higher education is causing tuition to skyrocket, increasing much faster than at private colleges.
State Budget Cuts Drive Up Tuition At Public Universities: New York Federal Reserve Report
The average tuition at a four-year public university climbed 15% between 2008 and 2010, fueled by state budget cuts for higher education and increases of 40% and more at universities in states like Georgia, Arizona and California.
Average cost of four-year university up 15%
Ehrhart said the system already has made numerous spending cuts, such as merging its 33 colleges around the state to 25 institutions. The system also has relied more on part-time instructors, who are less costly than full-time teachers.
“They have cut to the bone,” Ehrhart said.
The institutional fee was in response to there being little else to cut, system leaders said. This charge is similar to one the State Board of Regents started in 2009 for students attending the University System of Georgia. That fee was created to offset state budget cuts and was supposed to end this summer. But leaders kept the fee saying the system can’t afford to lose the $210 million a year it brings in.
Higher tuition and fees in the technical system could raise as much as $18 million this year and as much as $42 million next year, Light said.
Technical colleges increase tuition amid state budget cuts | www.ajc.com
As recently as eight years ago, Colorado funded roughly two-thirds of tuition costs; students paid the remaining third, either directly, or through grants, loans, or scholarships. Now this formula is reversed. Students increasingly rely on loans to bridge the gap between what they can afford and what scholarships and grants cover. All public Colorado institutions have been forced to dramatically increase tuition, thanks to state funding cuts.
Commentary: Government cuts = higher tuition | EdNewsColorado
You may argue it's proper to raise it on them, but you can't deny the facts. Cuts translate into higher tuition.
As I would expect, an educrat places the lion share of blame on not enough government subsidy for their insane tuition hikes we've seen over the past decade of more....There are ofcourse many different reasons that tuition goes up, and I have no doubt that a school facing a government subsidy cut would instead of looking for a way to do the job more efficiently, instead pile that lack of funding on the backs of the customer. Funny how that works isn't it?
Anyway, I found an article from the fiscal times that highlights a dozen reasons for the absurd hikes....they are as follows...
1.
Third party payments. When someone other than the consumer is paying some of the bills, the customer is not very sensitive to prices. Health care prices have soared for that reason, and it is contributing to the college price explosion as well.
2.
Lack of information. For markets to work effectively, buyers and sellers need lots of information. Yet colleges (in the information business) and their customers, are remarkably ignorant about key aspects of higher education. Do seniors know more or think better than freshmen? Does the senior year add as much value to a student’s knowledge, sense of right or wrong, leadership or critical thinking skills, etc., as the sophomore year? How much do students apply themselves? Do they like their school? What do they earn five years after graduation?
Does a sociology degree have the same vocational relevance as a degree in accounting or mechanical engineering? Answers to these and many other questions would help students and academic administrators make intelligent resource allocation decisions – yet no answers are available.
3.
Most higher education is not for profit. While most academics view that as a great virtue, I don’t.
The lack of a profit motive reduces incentives to cut costs, improve product quality, and other things necessary to make profits and enhance wealth in the private market economy.
4.
Closely related is the term bottom line. General Motors and Wal-Mart have well defined bottom lines –the stock price and profits.
What is the bottom line for Harvard or Slippery Rock State? Who knows? How can you achieve goals if you don’t know, in a well defined sense, what they are?
How can you get “more productive” when you cannot even measure your outputs well?
5.
Resource rigidities are a problem. Tenure makes it hard to move faculty resources from areas of low demand to those of higher demand.
Faculty with lifetime appointments can fight innovation and change with relatively few adverse consequences, stifling innovation. Universities own large buildings that are often underutilized, particularly after changing consumer demand renders some of them obsolete.
6.
There are problems with barriers to entry and restrictions on competition. Both accreditation agencies and
regulators make it difficult for small but innovative new institutions to begin. For example, proposals to require “state authorization” of on-line instruction in every state in which an institution operates forces smaller on-line companies out of the market in some states.
7.
The public nature of support and control of schools containing most students means that higher education is now, in some sense, politicized. Universities have to conform to rules in order to get government grants or allow students to receive student loans, and
these rules do not always make sense, having a “one size fits all” dimension to them.
8.
Universities try to charge what the traffic will bear, engaging in massive price discrimination, favoring some students (poorer ones, extremely bright ones, students of color) more than others (more affluent, less bright kids, white students.)
9.
Universities engage in rent-seeking – receiving
more payments than necessary to provide services. Workers sometimes receive
inflated salaries not justified by market conditions or merit. Salaries are higher for those who get research grants for time off from teaching to do research, compared with those who continue to teach full loads.
10.
Many schools, especially large research universities engage in massive cross-subsidization, showering vast resources on some activities, such as graduate education, while providing little for, say, undergraduate instruction. Lower teaching loads to promote research are subsidized by tuition fees ostensibly paid to provide for student instruction. This increases tuition sticker prices.
11.
Ownership of universities is murky. Many groups think they own “their” school –the faculty, the trustees (the legal owners usually), the alumni, state government officials, sometimes even students. This leads to turf wars and unproductive wastes of resources; for example, the chemistry department might forbid others from using “their” building, even though it might be wiser to use some of the space for other needs.
12.
There are often massive governance problems. Who runs the schools? There are several who claim that right, leading to murky decision-making, often by committees (“shared governance”) of
a non-innovative nature to appease all powerful claimants.
Read more at
12 Reasons College Costs Keep Rising
So as you can see Joe, the problems are far larger than institutions not being able to suckle off the government teet. Much of it has to do with what the problem with K - 12 ed as well...Top heavy in administration personal, Too many tenured instructors that don't contribute to over all education as their salary would expect, and consensus group think....
Could you address these 12 reasons laid out?