College costs 101

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 07 September 2014 | 20.49

It's a man-bites-dog headline: "College Gets Cheaper." But for law students at three American universities, that's just what's happened to their tuition bills.

The University of Iowa College of Law, Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania State University's Dickinson School of Law have all cut their prices for tuition. And all say they're already seeing a return on that investment.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the three schools are set to see the number of students in their entering classes rise by 22 percent to 52 percent.

Their experience confirms something The Post has been arguing all along: College is not exempt from the laws of supply and demand.

There's no real mystery about why tuition prices have been rising faster than inflation.

It's mostly because federal aid to students tends to benefit the university, not the student, by insulating schools from having to keep a lid on costs.

But now that we are in tougher economic times, people are asking harder questions about what they're getting for their tuition dollars.

In other words, our universities are fully capable of containing the costs and giving their students more value if we stop would only stop insulating them from market pressures.

Plainly, the law schools that cut their tuition found the same result that department stores do when they lower prices: more customers.

And there's plenty of fat to be cut at our universities — because tuition isn't the only thing that has been rising these past few decades. Most US universities have been adding employees at an even faster rate. And not for the classroom.

Earlier this year, the American Institutes for Research found that while universities increasingly rely on part-time instructors for the classroom, there has been huge growth in mid-level administrative staffing has.

In other words, among "business analysts, computer analysts, or counselors, or those staffing the human resources or admissions offices." The report found that colleges now average one administrator for every 2.5 or fewer faculty and staff.

As Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and a professor of economics at Ohio University, has ­argued, universities need to take a haircut.

"Excessive spending on administrative staffs, professorial tenure and other expensive accoutrements must be put on the chopping block," he says.

Good for these law schools for working to give their students more bang for the college dollar. The smarter schools will follow.


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