Obama puts colleges on notice. Seriously?!

[Deep13]

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-putting-colleges-notice-high-tuition-215440033.html

So during the SOTU, the President put colleges on notice for charging high tuition and threatened to cut off public funding if they do not do something about it. Like what? The whole reason they charge high tuition is because states keep reducing the amount of money they supply to public colleges to operate. Our budgets have been inadequate for decades. And those of us in the humanities are particularly bad off. I'm a grad student in history. About the only source of financial aid available to us are TAships awarded to some (but not all) students each year. With that we get out $5000/semester tuition (seriously, WTF?) remitted and receive precisely one pittance as a stipend. And that's IF we're selected. Our budget is all personnel. Does Obama have any idea how long it takes to become qualified to teach at the college level? I have to learn Arabic, for chrisake! Well, maybe he doesn't. After all he has a law degree (which I also have) and that is more like vocational training than an actual academic degree. Our department has already succumbed to the trend of hiring part timers for peanuts and with no benefits to save money. So if the President has any specific suggestions, I would be delighted to hear them.

Or maybe he just doesn't think the humanities are worth supporting. It sure seems like the state government here would agree with that. Yes, college students go to college mostly so they can make a decent living. Yes, math, science, and engineering are vitally important. I have no wish to take away from those fields. Still, every student should be studying to be more than a cog in the corporate machine. We are all heirs to millenia of art, music, philosophy, culture, literature, language, and history. Great discoveries are being made all the time in history. For example the history of the European Middle Ages has been completely rewritten based on new evidence in the last 20 years. I have the honor of studying under one of the leading scholars in that effort. My Middle East instructor has uncovered new documents in the Turkish archives that illuminate a previously little-known time in the late Ottoman period that helps explain how the Armenian genocide happened. Yet no one in authority seems to care about this or about advances being made in other fields of the humanities because there is no way to make them profitable.

Mr. President, material success is necessary for the human race, but the humanities are what make it a race worth running. We elected you to help us with a bad situation that we did not cause. If you are unwilling to help us, at least get off our backs.

[SharonAnn]

1. Part of the problem: States have greatly reduced funding for colleges and universities

Many states, like Tennessee, have greatly reduced their funding to community colleges and state universities. Thus, a large part of the tuition increase is to make up for that.

[Deep13]

2. Right. nt

[raccoon]

28. SC has too. nt

[mike_c]

3. that is certainly what is happening in the CSU....

Thirty years ago tuition at a CSU was essentially free, with only some very low fees every semester for access to campus resources, but 100 percent (or very close to it) of tuition costs were paid by the legislature. When I joined the faculty here, about 15 years ago, that had declined to about 80 percent, so on top of fees like health services, recreational fees, transportation fees, etc-- not to mention textbooks-- student's paid about 20 percent of their actual tuition costs. Now that number is approaching 50 percent, if I'm not mistaken, and the system is accommodating hundreds of thousands of additional students. Tuition costs to families have risen nearly 300 percent since 1998, when Charlie Reed became chancellor.

That's a microcosm of what is happening all over the country. I'm utterly convinced that-- at my institution, at least-- we are MUCH better at squeezing every dollar of state support harder than it's ever been squeezed-- ten straight years of declining budgets and fiscal crisis will do that to you-- so that 300 percent rise in cost to families is ENTIRELY to compensate for decreasing state support.

Attendance at public universities should be free, entirely subsidized by taxpayers. In California, the CSU and UC are the economic engines that helped create the seventh or eighth largest economy on Earth. Every dollar invested in higher ed in California returns over $4 later in revenue-- cutting that investment rather than restoring it is short-sighted madness.

[Deep13]

6. I absolutely agree with you.

I got my law degree from CSU and it was about $2400 per semester in the early 1990s.

[NYC_SKP]

9. $18,000 a year now for grad school

Doctoral program, three years, $54,000.

[Deep13]

10. It's $11,000 per annum at U. Akron in Ohio...

IF I don't take the university language course and IF I do not take summer classes, which of course I will.

[bigtree]

4. I guess you missed the part where he's providing money for those institutions

. . . at the same time, demanding that they keep tuition costs down.

[Deep13]

7. Yeah I did.

I'll believe it when we see the money. I wonder how much of it is for humanities. We're already in the hole. Additional money will make us less worse off.

[bigtree]

19. I'm thinking you'll spend as much time looking for that

. . . as you did in looking into these new initiatives. This is just nonfactual, misleading poutrage.

[Deep13]

21. Is this some kind of game to you?

"Poutrage?" Really? This country has an anti-intellectual streak a mile wide, and you could be "Exhibit A." This is a serious matter and my colleges and I--including many who went to bat for him in '08-- are being blamed for a problem we did not created and have done everything we can to mitigate. The problem is the state is screwing us and now our great liberal president is blaming us for it. I guess it's what I should expect from the guy who gave us Arne Duncan and his anti-public education agenda.

I didn't do research. I heard what the POTUS said and took him at his word. If he meant something else he should have said it.

[bigtree]

24. how hard is it to look into this?

. . . all of the hyperventilated nonsense from you without even looking into what he's actually proposing? That's a game.

[Honeycombe8]

5. Presidents don't go into details in SOTUs, but he wouldn't have said it....

if there weren't some sort of plan for that.

[Deep13]

8. I await details on the edge of my seat.

It's not like he hasn't screwed us before.

[Honeycombe8]

32. Have you checked the White House website? No, he hasn't screwed "us" before. nt

[Deep13]

33. Bush tax cuts. Pro-corporation insurance reform. nt

[mackattack]

11. Well stated

My fellow history grad student.

[Deep13]

13. Cool. What's your field?

Mine's Middle Eastern (modern since that's what our prof.'s field is.) We have to have three fields at U. Akron so Medieval and Early Modern too. Hopefully, I can do medieval Middle Eastern at OSU for my PhD.

[mackattack]

17. Mid Eastern guy

at OSU retired a year or two ago. Not sure who the new person/people they hired to replace him. I had a friend who had to transfer from that program to central florida because of it. Double check and make sure the new person is willing to take on a PhD student (I mean, you were gonna do that anyway so it was kind of pointless for me to bring it up).

I wanted to do Victorian/Edwardian Britain with Wilhelmine Germany and Empires as the secondary fields. However due to some interesting circumstances (i.e. girlfriend, now wife becoming pregnant) I had to withdraw my acceptance. Stinks too, I got in at some cool places.

I am doing public history at the university where I did my undergrad. It isnt glamorous but it pays the bills.

Such is life.

[Deep13]

22. I'll check it out. Thanks.

My U.Akron prof is pretty well connected and already described the pros and cons of their dept. She said to check out U of MI too.

[Sanity Claws]

12. A lot of private universities have fluff and overpaid administrators

I attended both New York University (undergraduate) and Columbia University (graduate) way back when schools had more reasonable tuition.
I am shocked at what they charge these days, around $50K in tuition alone. They seem to have lost sight of their mission to educate and instead seem to have growth paramount in mind. For example, NYU now operates a satellite college in Abu Dhabi. This is not a year abroad arrangement; it is a satellite campus. I refuse to donate to NYU anymore because of this.

This is just an example of how some universities have lost sight of their mission.

[Deep13]

14. I don't doubt it, but do they get much Fed. $$$?

It's getting to point where with their scholarships and endowments, it isn't much more expensive to go to a private college than a public ones. It's cheaper at a state school, but there isn't much money for scholarships there.

[Sanity Claws]

20. I don't know

They get fed money for research and specific projects but I don't know whether they get grants for operating expenses.

[phleshdef]

26. I went to a private college on grants and goverment loans paying for all of it.

If they are accredited, as the one I attended was, then they qualify for pretty much the same shit public universities qualify for.

[XemaSab]

15. Sounds like NCLB at the university level

"The test scores are in the toilet, so the solution is to cut funding for the schools."

"The tuition rates are going up, so the solution is to cut funding for the universities."

[JPZenger]

16. I believe it mainly affects Perkins loans and work study

[joeglow3]

18. No. Colleges are hurting in part because they piss money away.

Money magazine had a great article a few months ago on this and what colleges should be doing to address their runaway costs:

http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/08/pf/college/tuition_costs.moneymag/index.htm

"Over the 10 years that ended in 2009, spending by large public universities on instruction rose about 10% in real terms, reports the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit that analyzes college expenses.

Meanwhile, spending on student services jumped 19%, and outlays for operations shot up 20%, as the bills for everything from maintaining lavish dorms and spa-like gyms to salaries for the legions of administrators it takes to run large universities these days took their toll."

[Deep13]

23. I call horseshit.

Lavish dorms? Maybe at Boston U, but not at state schools. We run a very tight department and like I said it's nearly all personnel. I can't speak for the other departments--athletics for example--but most public colleges--except for the big state universities--are stuck in the middle of the city on some pretty unimpressive grounds with no convenient parking and people shoe-horned into dorms. Pricey schools with lavish accommodations are not dependent on public funds, we are.

[joeglow3]

27. That is EXACTLY what is happening around here.

13 years later and I don't even recognize my university. They have new rooms with suites for students. They have brand new buildings all around campus. They even completed re-routed streets through campus to build new buildings.

Same thing is true at the state school in my home town.

However, until I see better evidence, I will trust what is done by a group that specializes in nothing but analyzing college costs instead of some anecdotes.

However, check out the schools you are referring to:

http://www.tcs-online.org/Reports/Report.aspx

[tammywammy]

25. If you go to the Delta Cost Project website you can search individual universities

Very interesting data

http://www.tcs-online.org/Reports/Report.aspx

[sendero]

29. When I look at the cost of sending a kid to college..

.... I can't help but wonder where all that money goes.

In Tx, a decent state school will cost you $16K a year. For WHAT? The class sizes are HUGE. You still have to pay for your own books. I seriously cannot understand why it costs so much and I am quite tempted to believe that it does because that is what the market will bear.

As the economy continues to languish (and it will) and more and more people realize that there is no economic benefit to getting a degree (which is true for about 2/3 of the degrees kids graduate with), colleges are going to get squeezed hard, Obama or not.

[piratefish08]

30. it's the fucking finance system run amok that allowed colleges to do what they did. Mr President.

but let's not look backward.

[NNN0LHI]

31. Corporations used to hire high school students and then they paid for the college education

In 1973 I was one of those students. I was hired two months before I graduated high school making top union scale and benefits. And then the company sent us to college on their dime.

But a lot of Americans didn't like that system though. They had to have their imports so now most of those jobs are gone.

That is what happened.

Don't blame Obama for this. Blame your neighbor with a couple of imported cars in their garage for this.

Don