Why higher education is expensive middle-class welfare

Peter Wood, a professor at Boston University, weighs in on Senator Kerry’s proposal to make college more affordable. I’m posting this because of the comments on my post about the “giant sucking sound” coming from universities siphoning people’s money from their wallets. He confirms my thesis that higher education is expensive because of government intervention:

Why is college so expensive? Why does federal aid never really succeed in making college more affordable? These shouldn’t be deep mysteries. For over a decade I participated in university meetings aimed at determining my university’s annual tuition increases. The only real question was, “How much can we get away with?” And the only real worry was that, if we overreached, we might move to the dreaded top of the list for largest increases. Most years, it fell to me to draft a letter to parents from the Chairman of the Board explaining that the tuition increase reflected this or that combination of new construction projects and programs.

I recall visiting George Mason when Steve Schultz was going there in the early ’90s, when Virginia balanced its budget by modest reductions in spending. The university president decided that if the state was going to reduce its subsidy, he would endanger the safety of his students. He didn’t quite phrase it like that, but he did order the facilities department to start turning off random street lights for several hours a night, as a “cost-cutting” measure. He could have fired a useless administrators and that would have saved as much money, but instead he wanted to make sure young women would walk around in dark areas so they might be more easily assaulted.
Wood includes an ominous possible explanation for high prices:

But maybe we have just decided that high prices for a college education are a good way to organize our society. Those prices are high enough to discourage large families and to provide a strong incentive for both parents to work.

…which means the price of a college education is another manifestation, not of capitalism run amok, but of the Culture of Death.

19 comments

  1. hub and i both sit on private education boards. at one time he was on the board of a catholic college. like mr. wood our main concern was “how much can we get away with.” but in our present situations — because they are independent schools with a catholic tradition (read: not supported by the diocese) — we must get as much as we can because it’s expensive to pay off building loans and keep good teachers and pay for upkeep on carpets and desks, etc. what really rashes my nether regions is the fact that we manage at a THIRD of what state run schools cost and do a damn fine better job of it.

  3. Pardoned. Here in Northern Virginia, education costs run upwards of $12,000 a student, and Catholic schools are still less than $3,000 a year. Yet even though in four years we’ll be saving the public schools $36,000 a year by sending our three kids to our parish school, we’ll get no tax rebate whatsoever.

  4. Yes, my wife and I can’t have children, but we pay the same property taxes everyone else does regardless. And the fact that my brother and I went to private school in the 70s didn’t save my dad one thin dime.
    Yep. Culture of death, and the convenient use of the threat of legal punishment to steal the money of those who have earned it.

  5. Hmm, Eric, probably best not to go there. I am a recently retired (after sending my youngest to college) Catholic homeschooler in the northern Virginia area. Not only did we save our county untold thousands of dollars we also saved our parish the subsidy they provide to Catholic student-parishioners attending Catholic high schools. And, since our three children were counted in the census regularly, our county got Virginia funds for the 12-13 years of each’s school career. Not a penny of a rebate from any of them….not that I was looking for one, btw. But it occurred to me that if you had reason to holler then I had even more.

  6. I always find it funny when liberals say they are going to fix the problem of expensive education, especially since liberals are pretty much in charge of the universities.

  10. Jesus loves everybody. The question you should ask, JS, is:
    Do liberals love Jesus?
    The answer might be illustrative.

  11. As long as he’s not doing anything so vulgar as being tortured to death for our sins, then yes, liberals like Jesus.

  12. It’s good to know that you can speak so definitively about a group who you obviously know so little about.

  13. [In Northern Virginia] Catholic schools are still less than $3,000 a year.
    Really, there are some that inexpensive for individual students? We are at the young parish opening its Centreville Road school this fall, and the tuition will be $4500 per parishioner student with no discount or cap for multiple children from the same family.
    There will be financial aid and they’re coming up with ideas to help, e.g., if a family uses SCRIP to buy groceries with $ going back to the parish, they will receive a proportionate tuition discount.

  14. I think every school sets its own tuition, but in our parish — located in one of the most expensive areas of NVa — is $2,800 for the first child, $2,300 for the second, and it goes down from there. 4th and all subsequent children are the same price.

  15. I’m in NoVa area also. St Mary’s tuition is just above $3000 for the first child. I am guessing there are some family discounts. There is also a parent volunteer obligation, or pay $400 or so more. I did a little research a couple of years ago. We are starting our family through adoption this year–2 kids. But there’s no way in heck wed’ send our kids to public schools in Alex (or anywhere else) VA. Homeschooling crosses my mind at times. Some friends back home in the midwest said they’d have to choose between Catholic high school education and a college education. They’re opting for college.
    The govt subsidies (fed & state) do nothing to discourage expenditure levels by the universities. The subsidies do encourage marketing among schools, not so much for the student, but for the subsidy dollars he brings the school. The whole operation is very inefficient economically. The middle class gets squeezed the most. As soon as my parents divorced, I was suddenly the child of a single mother. Voila! Financial aid!

  16. I still wouldn’t want to send my kids to public school, but the public elementary school where we attend Mass has an “In God We Trust” sign on the lobby wall that seems rather pointed :) If I’m ever in need of a public school for my kids, we might feel more at ease there than anywhere. If we could afford to move into that district anyway.
    Maybe someone here will know whether this is relevant, but the literature said something about our school’s tuition being based on the actual cost of educating each child, thus no discounts for families with multiple students enrolled. I’m not sure what other Catholic schools’ tuitions are based upon.
    There is also talk of establishing some kind of fund for our own parishioners to contribute to tuition for kids from needier families.
    We’ll probably homeschool, or it would be financial aid for us, or my mother forwarding some of my inheritance for her grandkids’ tuition rather than leaving it to be heavily taxed after her death.

  17. I am thunderstruck to read the NoVa tuitions — when our parish opens its school this fall, tuition will be something like $6000 a year. What’s going on?

  18. It’s very notable that most of Catholic higher education has followed secular higher education down the path of high costs. This is yet one more area in which Catholic universities could have offered society a witness of Catholic values–keeping costs low to make college more affordable for large families. But, as usual, Catholic colleges and universities seem more concerned about conforming to the norms of their secular peers than offering specifically Catholic excellence.
    “Turning out the lights” is a classic bureaucratic or political defense maneuver. If the legislature has the gall to cut a small portion of some government institution’s budget, cut some highly popular or safety-related item and let the public outcry do its job.

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