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The most intense increases have occurred since 2008. In the period 1996-2006 the cost curve slowed, bwcause state support stabilized although at a lower level than <1980. Then it exploded after 2008 as states cut their support and never restored it.
It's because states have cut their support.
This is the story college administrators like to tell when they’re asked to explain why, over the past 35 years, college tuition at public universities has nearly quadrupled. It is a fairy tale in the worst sense, in that it is not merely false, but rather almost the inverse of the truth.
The conventional wisdom - which you parrot - was reflected in a National Public Radio series on the cost of college. “So it’s not that colleges are spending more money to educate students,” Sandy Baum of the Urban Institute told NPR. “It’s that they have to get that money from someplace to replace their lost state funding — and that’s from tuition and fees from students and families.”
In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.
In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education.
Some of this increased spending in education has been driven by a sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college. While the college-age population has not increased since the tail end of the baby boom, the percentage of the population enrolled in college has risen significantly, especially in the last 20 years. Enrollment in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs has increased by almost 50 percent since 1995. As a consequence, while state legislative appropriations for higher education have risen much faster than inflation, total state appropriations per student are somewhat lower than they were at their peak in 1990. (Appropriations per student are much higher now than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when tuition was a small fraction of what it is today.)
As the baby boomers reached college age, state appropriations to higher education skyrocketed, increasing more than fourfold in today’s dollars, from $11.1 billion in 1960 to $48.2 billion in 1975. By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.
State appropriations reached a record inflation-adjusted high of $86.6 billion in 2009. They declined as a consequence of the Great Recession, but have since risen to $81 billion. And these totals do not include the enormous expansion of the federal Pell Grant program, which has grown, in today’s dollars, to $34.3 billion per year from $10.3 billion in 2000.
It is disingenuous to call a large increase in public spending a “cut,” as some university administrators do, because a huge programmatic expansion features somewhat lower per capita subsidies. Suppose that since 1990 the government had doubled the number of military bases, while spending slightly less per base. A claim that funding for military bases was down, even though in fact such funding had nearly doubled, would properly be met with derision.
According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.
Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Poly Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the California State University System grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.
We had plenty of University administrators in 1975. Imagine a directive to reduce the number of administrators back to 1975 levels (that is, lay off a huge number of employees) and re-allocate the their compensation packages into funding for students. Of course, that isn't going to happen, but it is a fun thought experiment.
It is clear that there is much truth to the old saw that Universities exist to provide football for the alumni, parking spaces for administrators, and sex for the students.
So someone in Fresno or Bakersfield needs to make as much as someone from SF or LA? Consumer prices are 89% higher in SF than Bakersfield and 99% higher than in Fresno and rents are about 4 times more in SF. ....
You making up these numbers about the price of consumer products? If not, prove your numbers, starting with food, meaning the exact same brand of bread, etc.
I don’t know about specific prices, but according to Robert half’s 2020 finance professional guide, Fresno is 8% cheaper than the average cost index of 1.0 and San Francisco is 41% more expensive.
So if you wanted a cost of living feel of $100,000, you’d need to make approximately $92,000 in Fresno or $141,000 in San Francisco to have the same feel.
You making up these numbers about the price of consumer products? If not, prove your numbers, starting with food, meaning the exact same brand of bread, etc.
Can't do it, can you?
I am not certain where I got the data - but I did not make up the numbers. Here are a couple of sites that show essentially the same data comparing Bakersfield and San Francisco - here is one site
Quote:
The cost of living is 84% higher in San Francisco, CA Housing Costs 297% higher
Moderator cut: link removed, competitor site
Quote:
Consumer Prices Including Rent in San Francisco, CA are 89.77% higher than in Bakersfield, CA
Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 294.69% higher than in Bakersfield, CA
You are an idiot if you think your way is how you compare location costs.
This is the story college administrators like to tell when they’re asked to explain why, over the past 35 years, college tuition at public universities has nearly quadrupled. It is a fairy tale in the worst sense, in that it is not merely false, but rather almost the inverse of the truth.
The conventional wisdom - which you parrot - was reflected in a National Public Radio series on the cost of college. “So it’s not that colleges are spending more money to educate students,” Sandy Baum of the Urban Institute told NPR. “It’s that they have to get that money from someplace to replace their lost state funding — and that’s from tuition and fees from students and families.”
In fact, public investment in higher education in America is vastly larger today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was during the supposed golden age of public funding in the 1960s. Such spending has increased at a much faster rate than government spending in general. For example, the military’s budget is about 1.8 times higher today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education are more than 10 times higher.
In other words, far from being caused by funding cuts, the astonishing rise in college tuition correlates closely with a huge increase in public subsidies for higher education.
Some of this increased spending in education has been driven by a sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college. While the college-age population has not increased since the tail end of the baby boom, the percentage of the population enrolled in college has risen significantly, especially in the last 20 years. Enrollment in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs has increased by almost 50 percent since 1995. As a consequence, while state legislative appropriations for higher education have risen much faster than inflation, total state appropriations per student are somewhat lower than they were at their peak in 1990. (Appropriations per student are much higher now than they were in the 1960s and 1970s, when tuition was a small fraction of what it is today.)
As the baby boomers reached college age, state appropriations to higher education skyrocketed, increasing more than fourfold in today’s dollars, from $11.1 billion in 1960 to $48.2 billion in 1975. By 1980, state funding for higher education had increased a mind-boggling 390 percent in real terms over the previous 20 years. This tsunami of public money did not reduce tuition: quite the contrary.
State appropriations reached a record inflation-adjusted high of $86.6 billion in 2009. They declined as a consequence of the Great Recession, but have since risen to $81 billion. And these totals do not include the enormous expansion of the federal Pell Grant program, which has grown, in today’s dollars, to $34.3 billion per year from $10.3 billion in 2000.
It is disingenuous to call a large increase in public spending a “cut,” as some university administrators do, because a huge programmatic expansion features somewhat lower per capita subsidies. Suppose that since 1990 the government had doubled the number of military bases, while spending slightly less per base. A claim that funding for military bases was down, even though in fact such funding had nearly doubled, would properly be met with derision.
According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.
Even more strikingly, an analysis by a professor at California Poly Pomona, found that, while the total number of full-time faculty members in the California State University System grew from 11,614 to 12,019 between 1975 and 2008, the total number of administrators grew from 3,800 to 12,183 — a 221 percent increase.
We had plenty of University administrators in 1975. Imagine a directive to reduce the number of administrators back to 1975 levels (that is, lay off a huge number of employees) and re-allocate the their compensation packages into funding for students. Of course, that isn't going to happen, but it is a fun thought experiment.
It is clear that there is much truth to the old saw that Universities exist to provide football for the alumni, parking spaces for administrators, and sex for the students.
I work for a community college so I know something about what it costs to educate students. The reason CCs are cheaper than university is a little bit because our overhead is lower, but mostly because our subsidies have not been cut as drastically. They still have been cut, and we have raised tuition accordingly. I know everyone wants to blame administrators. I did too. But you could make every administrative salary one dollar and it wouldn't make much of a dent.
In 1975, the pinnacle of education technology was the overhead projector and slide projector. I still have in our office a slide set made by an education company that cost about $2000 in 1983. It came in a pretty case with a couple thousand slots and an index. You looked up what subjects you were going to discuss that day, pulled the slides out of the corresponding numbered slots, and loaded them into the projector. But at least that was a one time cost. I keep it around as a kind of antique to display.
Today I have to shell out $300 per year from department funds for streaming rights for one movie. If I could just purchase the DVD to show in a room, would only cost me $25 once. That kind of thing happens writ large with all the software licenses, etc... and you wonder why it's more expensive.
Last edited by redguard57; 02-17-2021 at 12:02 PM..
If Biden is asking for 15%, he is really hoping for 10% (negotiated down) and he will happily settle for 8%.
Biden isn't asking for anything, anytime soon.
He just admitted it won't be happening.
Quote:
When Joe Biden met with a group of mayors and governors last week he bluntly told them to get ready for a legislative defeat: his proposed minimum wage hike was unlikely to happen, he said, at least in the near term.
“I really want this in there but it just doesn't look like we can do it because of reconciliation,” Biden told the group, according to a person in the room. “I’m not going to give up. But right now, we have to prepare for this not making it.”
Biden learned a lot from the Obama years. One of the mistakes of the Obama years was trying to do everything on the wish list in the first year, and putting the kitchen sink into omnibus bills.
Main priority now is the covid stimulus. Fight for 15 is important but not worth blowing up covid stimulus over it. The immediate promise they have to keep is getting covid stimulus done.
Minimum wage is popular - In 2020 they voted to increase minimum wage to $15 by 2026 in FLORIDA by a 61-39% margin. If $15 can pass by that much there it will go over almost anywhere. Minimum wage can be rolled out later. and will be politically beneficial. Arguing for keeping a $7.25 minimum wage after 15-20 years of the same wage is not a popular position.
At the rate it's going, $15 minimum wage in another 3-5 years will be 70%+ popular. There are people who have grown kids who were born under $7.25 wage and you're arguing that $7.25 should still be MW when they start working? How stupid is that? A kid born in 2009, the last time minimum wage was raised, will turn 18 in 2027.
Last edited by redguard57; 02-19-2021 at 11:18 AM..
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