Interestingly enough, the Vice President of Budget and Capital Resources received approval for a 10% pay increase at the same meeting.

Tuition in the California State university system was increased 12%. At the same time, San Diego State’s president was approved for a salary 33% higher than the previous president. His salary is now a whopping $400,000.

At least administrators can continue to afford to send their children to California’s public universities!

For more see:
“UC Regents hike tuition – again”
“Capitol Alert: UC regents vote to increase tuition”
“Cal State trustees raise tuition 12%”

The post Education at California’s public universities gets more expensive again – UC has doubled in six years appeared first on Inflation Watch.

“The Riverdale Country School will charge $40,450 for high-school students in the coming year, the first time a New York private school has topped $40,000 in annual tuition.

Tuition costs at the city’s private schools, which breached $30,000 just five years ago, have climbed 79% in the past decade. The best schools have no trouble getting enough students.”

Interestingly enough, the affluent parents who pay these tuition charges – charges that are comparable and sometimes higher than the cost of Ivy League colleges – are apparently not complaining!

The article includes cost comparisons at the city’s top independent high schools.

The post Cost of private school is up 79% over 10 years in New York City appeared first on Inflation Watch.

The good news is that the salaries and benefits for college presidents at public universities held steady the last academic year (2009-2010) as reported by AJC.com in “Study: Recession hasn’t cut college president salaries“. This was no easy feat given the generous compensation:

“The median total compensation for 185 presidents running the country’s largest public research universities was $440,487. About one-third earned more than $500,000 and the 10 highest earned more than $725,000 each. Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee received $1.8 million, the highest.”

Of course, staying flat is nothing compared to the 27% hike in median pay for the nation’s CEOs in 2010, but those increases only restored CEOs to pre-recession levels. A University of Georgia spokesman defended the pay for presidents by pointing out the limited supply of qualified candidates for the job.

The bad news about inflation on college campuses is that tuition increased. Students paid a whopping 25% more in tuition in the last academic year. Assuming most of them will not grow up to be CEOs, they can probably look forward to working in a company where their salaries will not keep pace with the head honcho. (The average compensation package increased 2.1% last year).

The post Tuition up and top salaries secure on college campuses appeared first on Inflation Watch.

“Despite the increased cost, the College is still discounting students’ educations — which are worth twice the amount of tuition costs — by 50 percent…

Kim emphasized the value of an Ivy League education, citing the evaluations of economist and Yale University President Richard Levin. Levin estimated that a four-year college degree increases an individual’s income by 40 percent…”

Kim also claimed that financial aid is absorbing much of the hit for needy families.

Kim’s stance on return on investment (ROI) sums up the defense best: “Your return on investment of going to Dartmouth is higher than it’s ever been before.”

I could not tell from the article whether these answers mollified any frustrated students, but I think they are on the right track to question these constant price hikes that well-exceed the existing level of inflation.

The post Dartmouth President justifies price hikes claiming education still worth twice the tuition appeared first on Inflation Watch.

“…four-year public universities increased their published tuition and fees almost 8 percent this year, to an average of $7,605, according to the College Board’s annual reports. When room and board are included, the average in-state student at a public university now pays $16,140 a year. At private nonprofit colleges and universities, tuition rose 4.5 percent to an average of $27,293, or $36,993 with room and board…
…Over the last decade, published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities increased each year at an average of 5.6 percent beyond the rate of inflation.”

The spiraling cost of higher education has arguably been supported by generous federal assistance:

“In the last five years…average published tuition and fees increased by about 24 percent at public four-year colleges and universities, 17 percent at private nonprofit four-year institutions, and 11 percent at public two-year colleges — but in each sector, the net inflation-adjusted price, taking into account both grants and federal tax benefits, decreased over the period.”

These pricing dynamics show an increasing shift of funding for public higher education from states to the Federal government.

The post Tuition costs outpace inflation again appeared first on Inflation Watch.

This author believes that the bubble in government debt will burst first but given that government debt partially helps support the spiraling costs of education through support for ballooning student debt, the timing may be close enough. Note well that rising home equity helped many middle-class families scrape together enough money to pay for college for their kids – that prop will not likely return anytime soon.

The post The Tuition Bubble appeared first on Inflation Watch.

The post Tuition increases as much as 16% at Georgia public universities and colleges appeared first on Inflation Watch.

The post Regents raise college tuition in California by 32 percent appeared first on Inflation Watch.

In Rhode Island:

The R.I. Board of Governors for Higher Education voted last Monday night to raise in-state tuition and fees at the state’s three public colleges by 8 to 10 percent for the school year that starts in September 2010. At Rhode Island College, tuition will jump 9 percent to $6,986 for in-state students. Out-of-state students will pay $16,878. On top of the tuition increase, the board voted to raise the price of room and board by 5.1 percent at both the University of Rhode Island and RIC, bringing the cost of living on campus to $11,083 at URI and $9,519 at RIC.

 

In California:

As part of a plan to plug UC’s battered budget, the regents may vote as early as next month on the controversial, tradition-breaking proposal to require engineering undergraduates, along with those studying business, to pay $900 more a year than the rest of the student body. That would be in addition to the $2,514 systemwide fee increase all students are likely to see by next fall. 

In Alaska:

The University of Alaska Board of Regents voted to increase tuition … in the UA system Friday at a two-day meeting in Juneau…. Currently, undergraduate tuition for a full-time student enrolled in 15 credits, the normal course load, costs about $4,500 per year. Using that same course load, tuition will rise to $4,755 beginning fall of 2011. In fall of 2012, tuition will rise to $5,115 for the same course load.

In Colorado:

Colorado college students … could face another 9 percent tuition increase in the 2010-11 school year. 

In spite of the tuition increases (almost twice the rate of inflation for medical care during the past 25 years! why do we have a “health care crisis” but not a “university tuition crisis”?), enrollment at most schools continues to rise. Evidently, many students (or their parents) don’t think twice about borrowing $30,000, $40,000 or even $50,000 per year to pay for “education” of dubious benefit. Someday, the flow of easy credit to students will be cut off or sharply reduced.  When that happens, the higher ed bubble will burst. Harvard and Yale will be fine, of course, but many second-tier private colleges won’t make it. That day of reckoning, however, is far off.  Until then, our nation’s colleges and universities will continue to post larger price increases than virtually any other sector of the economy.

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