A Great Article in Today’s “Wall Street Journal”

Entitled “Dean’s List: Hiring Spree Fattens College Bureaucracy – and Tuition,” it is about my alma mater, the University of Minnesota. (Sorry, no open link that I can find.) During the last decade, they (like many other colleges and universities) went on a spending spree and hired a bunch of people, almost none of whom teaches. Since 2001, more than 1,000 administrators have been hired, and their numbers grew twice as fast as the number of faculty and the number of students grew. There are 353 administrators making more than $200,000 per year, and 17 making more than $300,000. Meanwhile, tuition has more than doubled in a decade, from $8,655 to $13,524. And here is a big change:

In 1975, a University of Minnesota undergraduate could cover tuition by working six hours a week year-round at a minimum-wage job.... Today, a student would have to work 32 hours at minimum wage to cover the cost.

I was a student there in 1975, albeit as a graduate student. I was a half-time teaching assistant, and I was able to save enough money during the school year so that I didn’t have to work in the  summer.

Incidentally, the article mentions that in order to attract students, colleges have to build fancy dorms, dining halls, and gyms. Can’t the gyms, at least, be outsourced, so to speak, to local businesses? Does it matter to the students if the gym they go to is right on campus or a block or two away, especially if their fees go down as a result? Let those who want fancy gyms pay for them directly.

Anyway, articles like this go a long way to prove that conservatives and libertarians are correct about the high cost of tuition: it’s not the lesser amount of money provided by the state, but the huge increase in costly administrators that is driving the high costs.

Slightly off topic, but this article affirms my belief that most adjuncts today are hopelessly wrong in thinking that money to help them needs to come from outside of academia (that is, from the taxpayers or from cuts to military spending, etc.). No, there is already plenty of money sloshing around in academia right now. It is simply maldistributed.

Update: Oops. I blew it. Reader Mark Spahn noticed an arithmetic error, which in fact wasn't in the article. The article noted that the tuition at the U. of Minnesota had more than doubled in a decade, and then added that the figure ($13,524) far exceeds the average at four-year public colleges of $8,655.

Sorry.

Comments

[Mark Spahn]

"Meanwhile, tuition has more than doubled in a decade, from $8,655 to $13,524."
13,524/8,655 = 1.562564991, an increase of 56%, not "more than doubled".
Isn't a calculator part of the tools of the trade of an editor?

[John Pepple]

My fault, Mark. See the update I just added.

[J. Reed Anderson]

A year ago or so, my wife and I spent a couple of nights at a very nice hotel that provided access to the U of M's gym facility. I noticed that with recent college grads, a business was expected to have the best and newest of everything. I wondered how extensive this sense of entitlement, and that questioned was answered that night at the gym. Wow... What my tax dollars buy, and what student loans underwrite. It's no wonder so many are disappointed with the "real world."

[John Pepple]

I haven't been there in ages, but I take it that it's a lot better than it was in the 1970s. At Kenyon College, a huge gym was built a few years ago. They are always showing it off to visitors. They also have 10 squash courts that mostly go unused. What a waste.