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Higher ed costs: still going up!
There's still a dirty little secret in higher education and it's called ever-spiraling costs. At a time when families are cutting back and taking out loans to send their kids to college, higher ed costs continue to rise.
You wouldn't know it from the headlines of course, since we are told, in today's Chronicle of Higher Education for example, that "Paychecks Stagnate for Presidents of Many Public Universities." In reality, executive salaries are not staying put -- they are merely increasing at a slower rate. Whereas median salaries increased by 7.6 percent last year, they only rose by 2.3 percent this year.
The same article also tells us that base "salaries stopped growing last year for more than one-third of the 185 public-university chief executives" surveyed by the Chronicle. According to my old-fashioned math, this still means that nearly two-thirds of these CEO's saw their base pay grow! Yes, it's great that some CEO's are declining their bonuses or donating some of their pay, but let's get real.
During economic downturns, most businesses don't increase costs and raise prices. Instead, they find ways to cut overhead and reduce administrative expenditures to make their products more affordable. That's what should happen in higher ed. And yet all too often, journalists, policymakers and families seem to take it for granted that tuition increases are inevitable in times of economic downturn and that higher ed costs -- which are, wouldn't you know, governed by their own inflationary measure -- must always rise.
At a certain point, the cost of a college education will exceed its value. Some would argue we're already well past that point. Isn't it time we started expecting colleges and universities to cut costs and live more like the rest of us?
Posted by Anne D. Neal on January 19, 2010 at January 19, 2010 11:07 AM
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