Thread: Is there a College Bubble?

Academic Bankrupcy

WITH the academic year about to begin, colleges and universities, as well as students and their parents, are facing an unprecedented financial crisis. What we’ve seen with California’s distinguished state university system — huge cutbacks in spending and a 32 percent rise in tuition — is likely to become the norm at public and private colleges. Government support is being slashed, endowments and charitable giving are down, debts are piling up, expenses are rising and some schools are selling their product for two-thirds of what it costs to produce it. You don’t need an M.B.A. to know this situation is unsustainable.

With unemployment soaring, higher education has never been more important to society or more widely desired. But the collapse of our public education system and the skyrocketing cost of private education threaten to make college unaffordable for millions of young people. If recent trends continue, four years at a top-tier school will cost $330,000 in 2020, $525,000 in 2028 and $785,000 in 2035.

Yet most faculty and administrators refuse to acknowledge this crisis. Consider what is taking place here in New York City. Rather than learning to live within their means, Columbia University, where I teach, and New York University are engaged in a fierce competition to expand as widely and quickly as possible. Last spring, N.Y.U. announced plans to increase its physical plant by 40 percent over the next 20 years; this summer Columbia secured approval for its $6.3 billion expansion in Upper Manhattan. N.Y.U. is also opening a new campus in Abu Dhabi this fall.


More at...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/op...ylor.html?_r=2

Originally Posted by Dr Sampson

I dont' think NYU can be fairly put into the same bracket. THey brought in 800 million in royalties from technology they licensed, I believe at least 25% depending on their distribution policies, is going back into education,a nd the royalties will continue to come in.But they are very unique amongst most universities in regards to royalty and licensing revenues.

According to the article, NYU is still in the hole..

The financial arrangements for these projects remain obscure, but it is clear that they will not be completed without increasing the universities’ already significant and perhaps unsustainable levels of debt. Last year Columbia reported $1.4 billion in outstanding debt against a $5.89 billion endowment. N.Y.U. had a staggering $2.22 billion debt with a relatively modest $2.2 billion endowment — one that had shrunk by more than 11 percent over the previous fiscal year.

I wouldn't blame faculty for this crisis. It's university administrators who make most of the decisions the article is talking about. Obviously it's in the interests of professional philosophers, for example, to have a philosophy department at every university--but it also gives pause that any university would be without something as intellectually basic as philosophy...or history, as one California State campus tried to outsource to another campus on the other side of southern California. Basic academic disciplines nurture the fundamental thinking skills that academics is supposed to foster. In many cases, what's going on isn't the turf war imagined by this writer, but a struggle over what kind of knowledge and what kinds of skills should university education teach.

It's certainly true that academia has not developed efficiencies based on technology advances, as have businesses--we need to do better, but not at the cost of the best methods of teaching, which mostly include at least some face-to-face contact.