Red Dog

But I assume the same kind of things were happening 20 years ago when I was in college (renovations, new buildings built, etc), yet I seriously doubt that costs over that preceeding 20 year period rose nearly as sharply as they have these last 20 years.

Like I said - I fully expect costs to rise for the things you mention, but not so sharply.

al_bundy

when i graduated HS almost 20 years ago i heard the same things about how tuition was going up so fast and how you would end up in major debt after graduation. and the numbers of young people are growing again so the college age population will continue to increase

Venusian

at my old college, if you started in Summer 2007, tutition was $1,946, if you started fall 2009, tutition was $3,035 per semester. So in two years and a couple of months, tuition went up 56%

Venusian

Looks like there is talk of a 35% increase on top of that for next year because of state budget cuts

orangecrush

And some people say that pre-paid tutition is a bad investment.

Venusian

Georgia got rid of their guaranteed tuition for four years

Red Dog

Now that may be an explanation (at least partly) of why tuition is rising sharply. The schools, particularly state schools, need to make up for that.

orangecrush

It could be a contributing factor. I think there are probably a lot of reasons for the double digit inflation. The basic fact that many schools get far more applicants than they have spots (no need to lower cost if you have excess demand), often times grants have a lot of strings attached so they can only be spent on certain projects or buildings but not on more faculty to fill the buildings, budgets are often done with no incentive to save money (use all your budget, or it gets cut next year) and faculty/administration salaries keeping up with other "high end" jobs that have also had higher rates of inflation.

slappypete

I think a lot of it has to do with the shift in demand from a traditional Liberal Arts focus to more specialized Business, IT, Science, and Engineering tracks.

One of my professors told me that the cost for the program to hire a new professor with a Phd from a top Business School was $120K to $200K depending on their specialty. This is someone straight out of school, not an established professor. To hire the equivalent History or English Phd would be around $60K to $70K.

Since the Business School was the fastest growing program in the University, they not only had to add more staff, they had to add more expensive staff, and the cost is obviously spread among all of the students through higher tuition.

I'd imagine it's the same scenario among the other disciplines where a Phd can make a lot more money in the private sector than they can as a professor, and these seem to be the specialties that are growing most rapidly.

Red Dog

Assuming the numbers support that, then I agree that could be part of the reason as well.

Birrman54

We're not exactly graduating more engineers though, are we?

Furthermore, the engineering graduates aren't having a difficult time repaying their loans.

al_bundy

someone i know has a child in a phd program at NYU. he gets paid money, gets a free place to live and an education to work on his phd. i bet the undergraduate and graduate tuition programs pay for that

al_bundy

US still leads the world in engineering and manufacturing

NotThatGuy

Undergraduate tuition covers the important stuff...in grad school.