Anyone can see that over the past number of years, college tuition and overall costs to attend a university have skyrocketed and is at an all-time high. Although, most people are not too sure why this has happened. According to authors Robert B. Archibald and David H. Feldman in the article, “Explaining Increases in Higher Education Costs,” there are two opposing arguments as to why this has occurred over the years. These include the Cost Disease argument, which was William Baumol and William Bowen’s view of the rising cost of education and the other was the Revenue Theory of Costs, which was Howard Bowen’s view of the topic. There are multiple goals throughout this article. A couple of the goals include explaining the two competing arguments …show more content…
Unlike Cost Disease, the cost when regarding Revenue Theory of Cost is not focused technological progressions or the standard of living. It is, however, focused on the revenue available for education that can be raised for each student attending college. Technology and the standard of living only influence the cost per student only if they influence those who control revenues and enrollments. This is called the Revenue Theory of Cost because universities see the quality and cost relationship as a limitation, and they try to get past this limitation and get more revenue for the students to get to the path to higher quality. It is known that universities spend all the money they are given. There are public restraints, such as health care or K-12 education, which keeps universities from wasteful overspending. Bowen explains that he expects colleges and universities to do everything they can to get past the constraint that revenue has on costs. Quality comes into play such that some think raising prices might decrease the amount of high quality students and would harm the overall quality of the college or university. Bowen states that “an institution can maximize quality or it can maximize revenue. It cannot do both.” Although maximization in quality usually trumps the maximization of revenue in terms of the cost of tuition. It is also said that the only way to control the institutions is to control their revenue (Archibald and
Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus report in their essay “Are Colleges Worth the Price of Admission?” what is expected from universities in exchange of their high costs. Currently, the price of education has duplicated its cost in comparison to the last generation (Hacker and Dreifus 179). Making a huge investment and getting poor results are the reasons what make parents and students hesitate before choosing a college. Hacker and Dreifus emphasize that colleges that are doing well their job share factors that make worth paying high tuition fees. These factors include: close relationships between professors and students, an adequate use of technology, and access to scholarships or part time jobs to make education affordable. Considering the
College is one of the most fundamental institutions in our modern world. It is a place where most of our future politicians, doctors, scientists, and leaders are made. Though, it seems that the price tag that comes with a college education is something that is too hefty for some students. Countless debates go on about whether the price of college should be abolished or whether the cost still is on the students to pay for.
The article discusses the rising cost of tuition and how colleges are being blamed for its lack of affordability.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, college tuition and relevant fees have increased by 893 percent (“College costs and the CPI”). 893 percent is a very daunting percentage considering that it has surpassed the rise in the costs of Medicare, food, and housing. As America is trying to pull out of a recession, many students are looking for higher education so they can attain a gratified job. However, their vision is being stained by the dreadful rise in college costs. College tuition is rising beyond inflation. Such an immense rise in tuition has many serious implications for students; for example, fewer students are attending private colleges, fewer students are staying enrolled in college, and fewer students are working in the fields in which they majored in.
College tuition is a hot topic these days. For a long time, people did not pay much attention to tuition. Today, things are changing. More and more, people are realizing how high tuition has gotten and now they want that to change. In the following essay, I have tried to tackle a very difficult topic. The problem with this topic was that, during research, I found that almost all of the information regarding it was attack after attack on the college administrations. I found no writings by college administrators even attempting to defend themselves. I discovered the awful truth about how much college tuition had gotten out of control over the years.
The mainstream media and critics continue to scrutinize college administrators who claim that the primary reasons for the rising costs at their campuses is primarily due to the increased number of faculty members required to accommodate the growing student population (Renehan 6). Furthermore, college administrators are claiming that to obtain the best college professors they have to compete with the attractive salary and benefit packages offered by their competition (Renehan 6). However, Doug Belkin, journalist for the Wall Street Journal, reported in an article titled, “How to Get College Tuition Under Control”, the arguments from three renowned Economists, Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum, Katharine Lyall and Richard Vedder who stated that the salaries
Larson, Erik.; Why colleges cost too much; Time, v149 (Mar. 17 '97), 1997, pp. 46-50
As The “Progress of Education Reform” suggests, tuition discounting is major contributor to the rising cost of college in the sense that while it provides a tuition discount to the one particular student receiving the grant or scholarship it places a heavier burden on the majority demographic that attends the university without such discounting. (The Progress of Education Reform” 1). In contrast to popular opinion, scholarships and grants which are normally regarded as blessings are ironically a contributing factor to rising tuition prices. Basically, the universities have to make up for the money they lost by awarding the scholarships so the majority of the student population who did not qualify feel it in their pocketbooks. A final cause of this ludicrous tuition spike is the shift in university budgets to cater to the administration departments of the schools. Jobs in this department are non-teaching jobs that provide student services ranging from student safety to counseling and wellness programs. These jobs are definitely
One cause of increased tuition is the reduction of state and federal appropriations to state colleges, causing the institutions to shift the cost over to students in the form of higher tuition. State support for public colleges and universities has fallen by about 26% per full time student since the early 1990s. In 2011 American public universities took in more revenue from tuition than state funding. About 80% of American college students attend public institutions. In a financial bubble, assets like houses are sometimes purchased with a view to reselling at a higher price, and this...
Is there really a price on education. I believe that education should not have a cost, which will never happen but at least lowers the number of fees. The outweigh of college impacts the economy in a negative matter because people doubt on education is it really worth it, which also impacts positively because some people still are willing to pay the cost of education. To begin with, I believe that author Abel Jaison and Deitz Richard are correct based on their information. Tuition over the years has become really expensive and something that not everyone can afford anymore.
As colleges’ funds dry up, colleges must turn to the public to further support higher education. By raising state taxes, colleges can collect funds to help improve the school’s budgets. The state provides funds from the taxes for colleges to receive a certain amount for each student currently enrolled. All community and traditional four year colleges collect these funds in order to maintain the school’s budget. As reporter, Eric Kelderman states, “less than a third of colleges’ budget is based from state taxes”. The school’s budget is how colleges are able to provide academic support programs, an affordable intuition, and hire more counselors. Colleges must now depend on state taxes more than ever for public colleges. Without collecting more funds from state taxes, as author, Scott Carlson explains how Mr. Poshard explains to senators “our public universities are moving quickly toward becoming private universities…affordable only to those who have the economic wherewithal to them” (qtd. in.) Public colleges must be affordable to anyone who wishes to attend. If colleges lack to provide this to students, it can affect dropouts, a student’s ability focus, and cause stress. The problem of lack of funding is that colleges have insufficient funds. Therefore, the best possible solution for the problem of lack of funding would be increasing and collecting more funds from state taxes.
The cost of an education past high school, is becomingly more and more outrageous to afford. In a web report article entitled, College Degrees Requiring More Student Debt, by Equal Justice Works, states “Unsurprisingly, the report shows a rapid increase over t...
While reading this article it gave me a different perspective on how I look at college tuition and education. I feel like higher education till this day is relevant and it still hasn’t improved. As a matter of a fact I feel like education tuition has increased over the past few years. It is still a problem for many people to attend college, due to the fact college/universities are insanely expensive. Some people can’t afford because they have families to take care of and getting an education is next to impossible. Some people might argue there are other ways to pay for college tuition such as, scholarship, I agree, but I also feel like some people might not have been in college for a long and have been out of the education world and at some
One of the biggest issues with the current colligate system is cost. A Congressional Analysis of current United States college expenses called it a “crisis” (Boehner). Americans spend more money on college than Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter make in profits in one year, an amount of over 400 billion USD. Federal s...
Universities have budgets which they are supposed to stick to, and now that they are not sticking to them, they need to raise tuition so that they can make up for the extra money that they spent. “The University of Virginia saw a 20 percent cut in their tuition bill in 1999, is planning a midyear tuition surcharge as bad state-budget news continues to poor in,”(Hebel, 2002). Universities are having a very hard time with their budgets that they need to raise tuition. There is a really good question to ask, why are they going over their budgets? There are many answers to that question, one of them is that the government isn’t giving universities as much money as they used to, another answer is that, they have so many students paying to go to their school, that they feel that they have to keep them there, so they spend money improving programs to help their students get the higher education ...