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President's Column
Holding the Line on College Costs
The cost of college
is a hot topic these
days—for students,
parents, and college
presidents alike. (As
both a parent of five
and a president, I
view the situation
from both sides of
the aisle!) As we at
Albright face the
annual task of setting tuition and fees for the
coming year, making college affordable without
sacrificing academic quality is an issue that looms
large.
It’s a complex equation, and one that is often
misunderstood.
For example, many people do not realize that
Albright, with our relatively modest endowment,
relies on tuition to pay two-thirds of our operating
costs. Likewise, students and parents often don’t
realize that Albright provides generous amounts
of institutional aid to nearly every student, which
cuts tuition “sticker price” almost in half—an
average of more than $12,000 per student.
Colleges like Albright are sometimes criticized
for not behaving like a corporation and lowering
tuition by simply reducing staff and cutting overhead.
But the major portion of college budgets is in our faculty and staff, which are the very
heart of our enterprise. An Albright education is
designed to be highly personalized. That is what
students and parents value and why they select
us. Larger classes (and thus fewer teachers per
student) would reduce cost, but it would also
fundamentally alter the quality of the learning
experience.
Cost containment is also complicated by the
increasing demands of the marketplace and new
technologies. Students and families expect—and
teaching and learning demands—the latest in
constantly changing technology, as well as up-to-date facilities and support services that were
simply not part of the educational landscape even
a decade ago.
The final part of the equation is simply the
rising cost of food, fuel, healthcare, and other
operational necessities. Taken together, it is a
challenge that keeps college presidents and CFOs
up at night.
It is disappointing that higher education
is sometimes portrayed in the media as being
indifferent to rising costs and to student debt.
In fact, the national commitment to access
for students has changed dramatically. As my
colleague Tom Kepple of Juniata College showed
in the October 2007 issue of University Business,
the federal government’s historic investment in
higher education has declined precipitously. Since
1980 the ratio of federally subsidized loans to
outright grants has shifted from 20:80 to 80:20.
The predictable result is a dramatic increase in“grants” that are “funded” by tuition discounting,
along with a correspondingly dramatic rise in
graduates’ debt load.
So we daily tackle the challenge of affordability.
Recently, several schools with multi-billiondollar
endowments, led by Harvard, made news
by announcing that they would eliminate loans
entirely from students’ financial aid packages,
and provide outright grants instead. While we
are steadily increasing our endowment through
the generosity of alumni and friends, without a
10 digit endowment we can’t follow suit. But we
are developing creative ways to control costs and
enhance productivity. We are lobbying for our
government to once again make serious investments
in higher education. We continue to raise
funds to support both the endowment and the
operating budget. And we explore every avenue
to deliver our historic excellence—at the lowest
possible price.
Lex O. McMillan III, Ph.D.
President |
