NYTimes - The Lows of Higher Ed

On September14th the NYTimes had a good article on the cost of college education and student borrowing by Gail Collins.

Here is an excerpt:

"Higher education is still the key to most good jobs, but the nation is starting to ask some questions about the way we finance it. Shouldn’t there be more of a match between the cost of school and the potential earning power of the graduates? Who speaks for the art history majors? And why is tuition so high, anyway? (Parents, if your kid is planning to take out student loans, you might want to avoid any college where the dorm rooms are nicer than your house.)"

The higher education system has become too expensive and entrenched.  This debate will only grow until the economics of college education come back down to earth.

Here is a link to the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/opinion/collins-the-lows-of-higher-ed.html?comments#permid=139




Here is my response:

I think this is a mess we all have created, students, families, schools and governments. 

State and local governments pay $75 billion a year to public universities to fund their losses. The Delta Project estimates that the cost of each 2-yr degree granted at a public university it about $46,000 per graduate. 

There is about $30 billion dollars a year donated to college endowments, much of which goes to elite schools with big endowments who use the money to fund the faculty and administration life style and amenities like high end dorms to attract quality students. Not much really helps poor at risk students, why we let this be tax deductible is beyond me.

Schools say education is a great investment but seldom counsel students on what borrowing money means and what they can expect to earn in the future.

Parents have given their kids bad advice and said college is a time to enjoy and find yourself - that was OK at $5,000 a year maybe, at $30,000 - $50,000 no way.

Students don't really want to be informed or responsible very often for their education and future - mom and dad have been doing that.

And lastly the government who tells us our schools are the best (as our college attainment rankings internationally drop), that our community colleges are cheap (ignoring the money we taxpayers give them directly to fund their annual losses), is pandering to education workers to get their votes, as they did with groups like auto workers in the past. We know where that got us.

Education Spending - no end in Sight?

I was looking at the level of K-12 spending in the country after reading an interesting article on the $100 million pledge that Mark Zuckerberg make to help improve the public schools in Newark NJ.  In 2008 -09 we spent approximately $660 billion on K-12 education or 4.7% of GDP.  On a per student basis, that averaged $11,231 per student with the lowest being Utah at $7,081, and the highest Washington D.C. at $19,166.


The article (link below) shows the growing tension between unions and states on the level of spending and how available dollars should be allocated.

I found the following excerpt very funny, but as in most political positioning, troubling in that the public may actually believe it! (Booker is the Mayor and the hedge funds are hedge fund owners who offered to make contributions to the effort, in addition to the $100 million committed)

"In a two-hour interview in his office in the city’s West Ward, Ronald Rice, a former police officer who is now a state senator, explains that Booker was planted in the city by hedge fund managers whose ultimate scheme is to privatize Newark’s public schools and run them for a profit. “Newark is a target because you have a billion-dollar budget,” says Rice. “That’s why the hedge funds are moving in.”"

You would think that the school system and the unions would welcome some help, but the reality is that outside support and involvement would shine a light on the system's ongoing sub-par performance.  Here is what the article states:

"In 1994, the average cost to educate a Newark student was $8,712. In the state overall, it was $7,378. The district’s graduation rate was 54 percent. In 2009 it spent $19,305 per pupil, more than many suburban districts. But Newark’s graduation rate remained a dismal 54 percent. By then, New Jersey was covering 81 percent of Newark’s $998 million annual school budget."


Here is a link to the article:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-28/newark-school-reform-about-that-100-million-dot-dot-dot


Below is a comment that I posted regarding the article:

A very insightful article.  Funny that unions in states like NJ ($17,605 per student) and Washington D.C. ($19,766 per student) complain about how they are being taken advantage of when the average annual spending per student per year in the U.S. at the K-12 level is $11,231.  

Seems whenever new money becomes available they use it to fund the "Status Quo",  Most of the stimulus money last year was just used to keep the existing teachers and administration employed.  I find it amusing that they don't get it.  Spending too much and getting bad results its not a formula to justify more funding.  You have to ask is anybody accountable?

Micheal Rae has some good stories about the situation in D.C..  Seems in both D.C. and NJ some of the new funds pretty much had to be used to pay bad teachers and administrators to stay home and not work,  It is a sad state and even worse when you realize that great teachers get lumped into the problem.  We have a long way to go.

Most of the comments here are troubling - does anyone care about the students?

State data on average annual per student spending:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_195.asp