Guess who soaked up the money from skyrocketing tuition costs?
Over the past 35 years, college tuition at
public universities has nearly quadrupled, to $9,139 in 2014 dollars. Because enrollment
in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs has increased by almost 50
percent since 1995, state appropriations
per student are somewhat lower than they were at their peak in 1990.
The military budget is about 1.8 times higher
today than it was in 1960, while legislative appropriations to higher education
are more than 10 times higher. If car prices had gone up as fast as tuition,
the average new car would cost more than $80,000.
Salaries of full-time faculty members are
barely higher than they were in 1970. And full-time faculty dropped from 78% to
50%, meaning that the average salaries
of the people who do the teaching in American higher education are quite a bit
lower than they were in 1970.
In contrast, highly paid administrative
positions grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, 10 times the rate of growth
of tenured faculty positions.
So the skyrocking tuition costs went to the
wealthy few in administration rather than the front-line troops, the
professors. That’s the American way.
To read the entire New York Times article,
click on
No comments:
Post a Comment