CAUSE OF STUDENT COLLEGE DEBTS/HIGH TUITION? A dear long-time friend of mine of decades suggested recently that the high cost of college tuition was due to the high compensation paid to professors... So to the extent that the following is a rant, please forgive, but here is my analysis of the outrageous cost of higher education to students in US, 2014... I have attached illustrative several images (from the web, so take them with a grain of salt): 1) Average tuition discount rate over recent years: no question, the skyrocketing costs require ever greater offsets. 2) Percent increase in costs of tuition versus increases in faculty salaries (increases in faculty wage are dwarfed by increased tuition costs.) 3) Support for education by the government has not been lower in memory. See that DRAMATIC drop? Who would question that state support of education has been decimated. 4) Some states are even worse in their failure to support education (Ohio is in the next to lowest category). 5) Student debt by state: Ohio is among the highest. So here is my take on the question of the prohibitive cost of higher education to US students. It is implied that out-of-state tuition in Ohio (as high as $25,000?), is because professors are paid too highly. You can imagine that this has stuck in my craw... Several points: 1) WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF HIGH TUITION RATES? Tuition costs experienced by students in the US are hardly because of exorbitant faculty wages... (Sports coaches and medical faculty may be excluded from this calculus...). The steep increases in tuition is due to repeated cuts in support for higher education at both State and Federal levels. (BTW, these cuts have impacted all levels of education.) A society that understands the value of a highly-educated citizenry will happily pay the tuition of successful students (look at the European model). I shake my head at the repeated right-wing tax-cutting mantra that education wastes money, isnt all that important, and should be among the first to be cut. (BTW, if it were not for a National Institute of Health Scholarship, I could NEVER have attended graduate school. NIH scholarships have all but disappeared.) 2) STUDENT DEBT: The crushing debt incurred by US students trying to further their education should be a national scandal. 3) WAGES TOO HIGH FOR TEACHERS? According to a national regression analysis of wages by Jeff Sauro (2009), the median wage for a US professional can be calculated using the following formula (2009 wages) $52,484 (base salary) + (number of years employment x $2,941) + $16,880 (value added for PhD). If this regressive analysis formula is correct, were I an average professional, working in industry for 40+ years, I would be earning $195,827/year... You may not be surprised, knowing how teachers are paid, that my salary is well below 50% of that. SOCIETY DENIES THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION AT ITS PERIL. I wish we as a society would recognize the value of an educated citizenry, and restore the major cuts in education, not just because an educated populace is the foundation of an advanced civilization, but as a sign of respect for the role of educators in our society...
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 13:50:09 +0000