Issue of
February 11, 1998
 
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Higher ed panel
clarifies costs, urges institutions to do the same
BY ELAINE RAY
The good news is that
higher education in the United States offers a variety of
options unequaled in the world. America's public and
private sectors invest in the academic enterprise to a
greater extent than their counterparts in most other
nations. The bad news is that the cost of college has
raised such public ire and confusion that it threatens to
undermine the academic gains that have been made.
Related
Information:
Such was the message of
the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education,
which recently released the findings and recommendations
of a five-month study. The report, titled Straight
Talk About College Costs and Prices, noted that the
average tuition at private universities rose from $2,881
in 1976 to $15,581 in 1996. Tuition at public
universities increased from $642 to $3,151 during that
same period.
Acknowledging that public
anxiety about college costs has "risen along with
increases in tuition," the report stated: "What
concerns this commission is the possibility that
continued inattention to issues of cost and price
threatens to create a gulf of ill will between
institutions of higher education and the public they
serve."
The commission was
appointed in August by Congress and federal Education
Secretary Richard Riley. Its 11 members include college
presidents, heads of higher education associations,
corporate representatives and scholars. Throughout the
fall commission members convened in various locations and
heard testimony from higher education officials and
others. President Gerhard Casper spoke to the panel when
it met at Stanford in October.
Earlier this fall, news
reports suggested that the commission's preliminary
report would assert that American higher education is a
bargain, much to the dismay of some commissioners and the
general public. In its final report, however,
commissioners made it clear that American higher
education is one of the nation's greatest strengths, but
also insist that all those who have a stake in higher
education can take responsibility for reining in college
costs.
Universities must conduct
regular assessments of their own finances and work harder
to control their own costs, the commission recommended.
It called for these institutions and higher education
associations to make comprehensive and understandable
information on costs available to the public. The
commission advised state, federal and local governments
to take steps to deregulate higher education. The federal
government must enhance and simplify student aid, and
accrediting bodies must make their efforts more efficient
and put more emphasis on student learning than on
institutional resources, the panel noted. For their part,
families must take responsibility for college saving,
while students do all they can to prepare themselves for
the rigors of postsecondary education.
"I was very pleased
on the whole about the commission report," Casper
said. "Obviously, I was pleased that the commission
recognized that American higher education remains an
extraordinary value. This is an insight that often gets
lost in the discussion," he added.
According to the
commission, the "price" of a college education
what students and their families pay and the
"cost" of that education what institutions
spend to provide educational services to students are
not the same. A "subsidy" is defined as the
difference between the cost to the institution of
providing an education and the "sticker price,"
that is, the tuition and fees, charged to students.
"Although most public
discussion of the affordability of higher education
focuses on tuition charges and increases," the
report stated, "tuition (i.e., 'sticker price') is
but one component of the college cost/price picture. As
noted, the total price (tuition plus other educational
expenses), net price and instructional cost per student
and the complex interrelationships among these
concepts should all be included in discussions of why
the price of attending college may be increasing."
"I think this is the
most sophisticated treatment of college costs that I have
seen in the literature," Casper said. "Every
student is subsidized, even those who pay full
tuition."
When it comes to
institutions controlling their own costs, Casper noted
that administrators here have been addressing this issue
for several years. "Stanford has been doing this now
in a real sense ever since 1990, and we have made many
changes," he said. "We have indeed worked very
hard to reduce our costs." He added that he was
pleased that the commission stopped short of recommending
price controls, which he said "would indeed be
destructive of academic quality in higher
education."
Decentralized research
universities, Casper noted, sometimes have difficulties
determining where to cut costs. "In order to create
this very stimulating environment, we need to maintain a
very complex, research-intensive institution. Some of the
costs that go into research benefit the students as well.
And it is very hard to know in the end how exactly to
draw the bottom line," he said.
Members of the commission
are Martin Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution; William Troutt, chair of the commission,
president of Belmont University, Nashville; Barry Munitz,
vice chairman of the J. Paul Getty Trust; Jonathan Brown,
president of the Association of Independent California
Colleges and Universities; Clare Cotton, president of the
Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in
Massachusetts; William Hansen, executive director of the
Education Finance Council; Frances Norris, a former
federal education official who is now vice president for
congressional affairs for US West; George Waldner,
president of York College of Pennsylvania; Walter Massey,
president of Morehouse College; Blanche Touhill,
chancellor of the University of Missouri at St. Louis;
and Robert Burns, a political science professor at South
Dakota State University. SR
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