Case in point: Eastern Illinois University. I was shocked one year to discover, while attending an arts event, that the building the event was held in was falling apart at the seams. I was amazed that portions of it actually remained standing. Later that year Eastern announced an improvement project that they pumped a great deal of money into. They closed off the front drive to the Administration building, then erected a large stone and iron monstrocity that looks out of place and totally unnecessary. It was many years before the university corrected the arts department building woes.

In the meantime I have seen several intelligent, competent potential students who could have had very bright futures who instead entered the blue-collar area because they could not pay Eastern's tuition and fees. What a loss to the state and federal government. We lost what these young people could have become. We lost the extra tax monies they would paid with the higher paying jobs they could have attained. We lost the potential jobs they might have created, and the donations to just causes they might have made. We lost potential teachers, doctor's, and business leaders. But Eastern does have its stone and iron "whats-it?."

The bottom line is that I have not donated directly to the college for years. Instead, I find struggling students with great possibilities, and turn the money directly over to them. I would much rather keep a student fed, purchase their textbooks, and give them gas money to get to class, than see that money used to re-design a garden or pay the president to go to a luxury meeting. I just wish that I could afford to pay the tuition as well, but it skyrocketed out of my reach long ago.

Don't be surprised if higher ed shows up in Washington next for their bailout.
Check out Grove City College(not my alma mater) where they accept zero public funds - never and have managed to keep tuition very low. Universities have screamed we need more money, more money and they've been glorious recipients - actually piggies at the federal buffet for well over 20 years. This has turned them into lots of things beside educators - real estate developers no doubt. Now, few can afford tuition and the fed and state can't afford higher ed welfare.
It's over - they need to restructure plus real in the total left slant dished out by the staff too.
I have 2 pending students, if it isn't straightened out before they go, I'm sending them on a extended Global holiday then to community college!

I agree that the cost of higher-education is rising at an alarmingly fast level. However, beyond broad generalities and allegations that it is the bureaucrats who are siphoning money off into their own pockets, I don't think you provide us with any information as to why this is. Most of this piece is unfounded opinion and speculation. Meticulously sift through a large number of schools budgets and then get back to me. Also, no offense is meant by this, but why does TDB has articles written by a college sophomore on its frontpage?

I feel the same way! I haven't been financially able to give to UPenn for several years. While I admire the things that they have done to improve the community surrounding the university, I simply don't have the money. I have 60K in student loans from my graduate education there. My husband and I call it the "cabin in Wisconsin" that we will never actually live in. The degree opened doors for me, but the salary for my profession is not in proportion to the cost of obtaining the degree. Roughly 85% of my classmates had wealthy parents who could pay for their tuition (both graduate and undergraduate) so I guess the cost of following their academic passions never really impacted their personal finances.

I don't worry about the finances of the universities too much. My classes had at least 10 students who barely spoke English and came from Asia or India. I doubt that those students were eligible for financial aid. The universities can always fill their classes with the elite from overseas-- as it seems to be one of our only exports.

I disagree. I am a senior at a small, prestigious, liberal arts school and were it not for the generosity of alumni, I would not have been able to afford to come here. Yes, tuition here is expensive, but I think it would be a false connection to assume that because of alumni donations the cost of tuition is increasing. My school has received upwards of $200 million in alumni donations in the last year, $100 million of which is going directly to student aid, the rest to professor salaries and funding for research and sabbaticals. To generalize and say that no alumnus should given any money to any university simply disregards the numerous variables that factor into alumni giving. Rather than making such a sweeping argument, you should encourage alumni who have the means to give to thoroughly research how their money will be used and how the university is being run. While I do know that each school is unique, at mine, a large part of the endowment is managed by students who are charged with investing it, so when a huge part of it was lost with the economic downturn, it was the students' "fault" (if fault can truly be assigned in this situation). University tuition will continue to rise regardless of whether alumni donate money to their alma matrae, and rather than contributing to this increase, the generosity of alums makes it possible for those of us who are not independently wealthy to attend some of the nation's best schools.

I'm sorry to use caps lock, I know it's rude, but:

PLEASE DISTINGUISH BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN YOUR ARTICLE.

As we here at the desperately (and consistently) underfunded University of California system know, there is a difference between ivory towers (who've lost endowment money) and public institutions (who have lost so much of their public funding that we have had to turn increasingly to external fundraising).

That said, your system of "punish them for prior foul-ups" is wrongheaded in general. No high-level administrator will (if history is any measure) learn the lessons you suggest that they should; if there is less money, the cut will be taken invariably out of the pockets of starving graduate students and staff, and tuition will hike ever higher. As satisfying as a slap in the face to the bureaucrats may be, this is not how to do it.

I agree with sugarface. We too (a public institution) are extremely underfunded. When I attended, we were financed at 48%. Now it's 18%. This article makes extremely broad assumptions and is written from the viewpoint of a student.

This is a fairly cartoonish portrayal of how institutions of higher education operate. Does a college sophomore really have enough insight into the complex financial and administrative workings of colleges and universities to make blanket statements tarring all institutions as wasteful, foolish spenders? As an administrator at a small private liberal arts college, I attend weekly meetings with the president, and we've been having lots of discussions in recent months about how to weather this financial storm. There's nothing straightforward about these discussions and the decisions that have to be made. I won't engage in the same blanket claims as the author by saying that ALL financial decisions made by colleges and universities are great ones, but I suspect most of them aren't as dumb or misguided as he imagines. His general approach to the topic reminds me of people who think the federal government could just cancel a Stealth bomber and give the money to public schools. That's just not how budgeting anywhere works, and withholding annual fund contributions to your alma mater isn't going to reduce the president's and provost's salaries.

Another thought: The major premise of this story just doesn't make sense. Colleges and universities are in financial trouble today largely because of factors beyond their control (shrinking endowments due to declines in the stock market) rather than irresponsible decisions made by campus leaders.

i pray that this kid's aunt is Lisa Lillien (Creator of DailyBeast) or something. Otherwise the fact that his unproven, moronic statements get published on here means even reasonable media outlets have sunk to the stupidity levels I once thought only television networks like MSNBC and FOX could.

Tsk tsk tsk, Zach. As a UMass alum, all I can say is, you better hope your professors are not reading your musings about not taking their hopes to retain their professorships seriously. Even if they are bluffing.

And, I might add, I think that your impressive handle on finance and writing does not go far enough in understanding the needs of 3 million individuals whose livelihood depends on Detroit. Be careful what advice you throw out there until you have considered all the parties involved--I'd hate to see that UMass didn't teach you this lesson. Go Minutement!

bananaphone sounds like a old fart, living a reasonable life, with reasonable expectations from life.

It's the "unreasonable" people that makes our world interesting, and I'm glad The Daily Beast is unreasonable, and put this young punk on the cover page.

You can sit around and bitch all you want, last I heard, the gray lady is about to sing her last tunes. So get use to us unreasonable people, you're going away, and we're not.

If you think the automakers are bloated, try big universities; before blindly writing checks, alumni should ask why does the university need a layer upon layer of administrators, deans, assistant deans, provosts, chancellors, deputy chancellors, and deputy vice chancellors and committee after committee to handle every little task - from hiring a $40,000 a year researcher to approving a grant application. All this while undergraduate students watch lectures on a video monitor in cattleshed classroom of 300 or mlore. And many universities spend on landscaping more than the entire budgets of some small towns! It's time for universities to get back to basics - students wanting to learn, and teachers willing to teach, and cut out all the other stuff.

Another case in point- me, the current college student!

I don't graduate from UT AUSTIN for another few days,
yet the emails and letters started 3 months ago.
"Give back. What you give changes the world...".
Their rhetoric is a joke, and I get so angry
each day as I realize more and more how bad I've
been played.

Here are some things I dwell on:

- When I left UT for a 2 year hiatus in 2004,
full time semesters cost $2,600.
-When I came back to UT in 2006, I nearly fainted
on the financial aid floor when they handed me a
$4,200 bill! Yes that's right. Nearly a 100% increase into 2 short years. Call UT Austin Financial Office if you don't believe me.

- The emails talk about how much I need to give for all the reasons you've stated, but just like the first comment I read,
nothing changes except fancier surroundings.
...or what they assume is fancy, because it's "modern".
For instance 2 months ago, something so ironic to this article was erected, it's as if they're just trying to see how stupid their kids are.
2 giant 6 foot in diametar iron balls with welled on pennies were purchased from some ridiculous artist for millions and placed on the tower's east mall. As if to say, "Suck on these!".
And this is one of SEVERAL useless stupid metal pieces of crap "art" displays erected in the last year alone.

Let's see, also, since I came back, we now have the biggest football stadium TV in the country! Oh, and we pay Football Coach Mack Brown and President Powers millions combined. And Oh! as a tangent, a recent article was published in our paper speaking about how long poor Powers days are. See he's got these morning meetings in his fancy office EVERYDAY (kind of like, I don't know... CLASS) and doesn't make it home till after 6 p.m. most days. Poor soul!

Meanwhile, because my bio lab isn't in a building where classes are held, water is dripping from the ceilings,
and the clocks in the halls haven't worked since the 90's.

Geez, I could go on and on about this ridiculousness...
I almost want to write an article for the Daily Texan just as you
have asking my fellow students to wake up as well.

Thank you for this.
rjgray@mail.utexas.edu

p.s. The university has sent me another email stating that due to cost issues, you cannot keep your email for very long after graduating. Bummer.

hahahah, of course everyone who works for a public/private college would defend their own system... how typical. you people disgust me, this guy wrote a pretty well-thougthout article with several examples of evidence and you guys just cast him off with your own "blanket" opinions. Oh, and DataMonkey, the reason why the premise doesn't make sense to you is because you failed to recognize it.

maxpower: Here's the key sentence of the article: "Colleges manage money just about as moronically as any institution in the history of the planet." You're certainly entitled to view the author's defense of that proposition as "well-thougthout" but I still don't think that he shows that he understands how colleges and universities make financial decisions. Six months ago, many people thought endowment managers at places like Harvard were geniuses because of the returns they got on their investment portfolios. The thing that changed wasn't that they suddenly turned into "morons" but that the bottom fell out of the stock market. And I hope you're as disgusted about the management decisions of institutions like Lehman Brothers, Citibank, General Motors, AIG, et al. as you are about "us people" in higher ed.

Certainly the goal of making higher education available to all students, regardless of their family's income, is worthy.

As such, we should applaud universities, like Harvard and MIT, that have made substantial and dramatic commitments to financing the educations of it's less wealthy students.

Beyond that, I think the premise of this article -- that colleges and universities are somehow managed irresponsibly -- is patently wrong.

Sadly, this premise seems to be rooted in the idea that higher education (the belittled "ivory tower") is somehow not a valuable part of our society.

For instance, the argument that university presidents, who manage multi-million/billion dollar budgets that are responsible for employing thousands of people in a given community, are earning too much money, is to argue the work university presidents do is not valuable.

How can you compare the tens of millions of dollars earned by excessive Wall Street crooks, who ran their banks and our economy into the ground, to the relatively modest salaries of university presidents and professors, who earn about as much as lawyers and doctors, and whose institutions are still breathing, despite setbacks in endowments that plummeted, like your parents' 401ks, as a result of economic downturn. In light of the crumbling economy, it seems that universities and colleges are some of the best managed organizations in this country.

As for "lavish" food courts and dorms and campuses and "celebrity" professors, I don't exactly see why those are bad things.

First of all, using the term "celebrity" to describe top professors is another way to belittle the value provided to society by scholars and teachers (who do you want teaching our students, anyway?) Second, since when have beautiful campuses been a sin? And should schools with beautiful campuses neglect to landscape (which employs landscapers, by the way)? Should we let our universities become mud pits? I just don't understand the argument.

Do students want to attend university in Soviet-looking concrete buildings, with no windows or trees? Because I've seen universities like that (former East Berlin has a few, I think), and they're not enticing.

Here's another premise I disagree with: Community college=good; elite university=bad. This smells like class warfare.

I applaud the work conducted by community colleges, which should, without a doubt, be supported. Elite universities are also doing important work. Their missions are not entirely similar.

I also think the facts are muddled here. I think most elite universities are committed to increasing, not decreasing, financial aid to worthy students. I think most universities have been well managed, especially in relation to the banking and auto industries.

In addition to educating students, universities are dedicated to funding important research in medicine, science and the humanities, research that isn't getting funded by other means. (Tax payers certainly bitch and moan if government gets involved.) Unless you believe that universities are useless, that the mission of universities is pointless, that we as a society don't need such institutions -- and many people do make that argument, though it tends to correlate with other arguments such as a disbelief in evolution -- then I don't understand how you can complain that universities seek funding to operate.

In the end, the author is asking alumni to punish alma matters for sins they didn't commit.

If we have a goal of helping cash-strapped students pay for college, then withholding donations will only hinder that goal. If universities' sources of funding (endowments, grants, donations) dry up, it will only increase the need to raise tuitions. The thrust of this article is, therefore, counterproductive to its goals.

It seems the author is at war with the entire concept of higher education in America. But I am not. I'm in love with the concept of higher education in America. It's the best in the world and I want it to stay that way. I loved my college, I loved its campus, I loved the professors and the friends I made while there, and I loved the education I received. I don't have a lot of money to give, but since it's my own damn money, I feel no qualms about handing some of it to an institution I'm connected to, and to one I think is doing good things.

I attended an ivy league institution thanks, in part, to the generous contribution of another international student at time when no other institution in the United States offered the same level of financial aid to international students like myself. I'm proud of being part of that tradition and, even as a graduate student, I always found twenty bucks to donate to my home institution. People give money for all sorts of reason, in my case, I feel connected to my undergraduate university and want to continue to support it. Nothing in the writer's argument acknowledges this special relationship that some of us might bear to our undergraduate institution. I have no illusions that my undergraduate institution will manage their money in the way that I would manage it, but I have no particular goals in giving them money though I hope they continue to support international students. I just want to say, thank you for a great education. What's wrong with that?

I disagree, I am a freshmen at Cornell University, and I am a financial aid baby... Because of the recession, Cornell is cutting a lot of costs, but one thing that they are not reducing is my financial aid. If I end up with a high-paying job when I graduate, I'll feel morally obligated to give some to my university.

Furthermore, the increases in tuition are more of a new business model than anything else... the idea is that with a ridiculously high tuition, the university can charge what it wants based on the parent's income - most aren't paying full tuition. With a very high tuition, the university can bleed rich families for extra cash, while using that extra money to either a) improve the quality of the university or b) pay for the cost of educating those who can't pay. I also think that 439% increase in tuition is misleading because it ignores the similarly drastic increase in financial aid. Just because tuition has increased that much doesn't mean that the cost of college has, on average, increased that much.

Neither side of this argument has been well-presented by anyone here. Zac has not demonstrated exactly what missteps colleges have taken in managing their endowments and their costs. And his challengers have not responded to his core question, which is essentially: If they're managing so well, why have costs for education increased so much faster than inflation and other benchmark costs, like healthcare? Higher education institutions charging more that $25K per year need to to account for themselves, line-by-line.

I think we can strip away all the rhetorical flourishes and focus on those two questions. What have colleges done wrong, and if nothing, what accounts for the staggering increases in tuition?

The increases in tuition are often the result of decreased funding from other sources, as Federal and State dollars dry up and competition for grants and other funds from private foundations grown increasingly stiff.

I was only able to attend a private college because the financial aid package they offered brought their tuition and board in line with the costs of attending my state's flagship school. This meant taking on approximately $30,000 in loans over the course of four years. Would my life be a little nicer if I didn't have to cut a check every month to pay those back? Sure. But I got a great education, made incredible friends, and had a number of other experiences at my small, prestigious, private institution that I never would have experienced on a campus of over 20,000 students.

For what it's worth, tuition doesn't come close to paying the costs of running a school; if you look closely at your institution's financial statements, Zac, you'll see that the sum total of tuition and fees is around $199,000,000 (that is, the total "General Operations" revenue less State Appropriations and "Other," which seems to be mostly indirect costs recovered from grants specifically to subsidize the cost of maintaining facilities in which the research the grants are funding is being done). It seems like a lot of money, I know, but if you then take a look at where the money goes, you'll see that this barely covers the cost of "Instruction," which is $193,000,000 (these are the FY07 figures I'm quoting). Basically, without even taking into account the cost of building buildings and keeping them lit and heated and with operational bathrooms for classes and offices, without paying any secretaries or even accounting for photocopier paper, the total income from tuition and fees only barely covers the cost of paying teachers to teach the students at Amherst. Money from the state and from private and public donations and grants, as well as the money earned from selling tshirts and so forth, has to cover the rest.

This piece reads like a rant overheard in my undergraduate cafeteria, and I'm deeply disappointed with The Daily Beast for having published it.

UMass Revenues: http://www.umass.edu/af/budget/FY07%20Files/FY07%20Operating%20Budget%20Tab le%202%20for%20Web.pdf
UMass Expenditures: http://www.umass.edu/af/budget/FY07%20Files/FY07%20Operating%20Budget%20Tab le%203%20for%20Web.pdf

onbullshitdotcom,

You sir, might be moronic then the original poster. I am not old, unless you consider 20 years of age to be old. I am just embarrassed to see my generation look like a bunch of idiots. This is the second time we've had to hear him advocate community colleges over elite institutions. I also don't think he knows how a school actually allocates money. Sure I wish my tuition was cheaper but this article has no value. The argument is flawed beyond belief and I know a multitude of kids who deserve to have their work published over this kid. The only thing he does prove is that UMASS amherst is obviously not spending enough on educating its students.

With their endowments, the only thing colleges have really done wrong is trust the market to not fall, same as everyone.

What accounts for the staggering increases in tuition? Financial aid means that the listed tuition number is really a maximum price, and the higher it is, the more price discrimination they can do.

I never thought much about college education, so I didn't pay for it. I went to Cooper, it was free, and since I pretended to pay, they pretended to teach. Fair enough.

Funny thought from Ben Stein:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/business/yourmoney/23every.html?_r=1&p agewanted=print

I second SpaghettiMonster. This is another poorly researched piece laced with anecdotal drivel from Zac (sic). Now Zac (sic) not only continues to plug community college, but also blames alumni contributions for the rising cost of a college educaion. Backwards, eh?

And, by the way, despite the financial crisis, after many years of growth, Dartmouth's endowment lost only 6%. Most retirement plans have had far greater losses of late. I do not think community college graduates are managing that money.

TDB: PLEASE DROP ZAC (sic) FROM THIS SITE!