College costs keep climbing |
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But that doesn't mean that colleges shouldn't account for escalating costs.
"There are a number of things that have caused tuition costs to spiral out of control," she says.
One problem: Parents clamor to send their students
to the top schools, the ones ranked in the top 50 or 100 according
to various media, most notably the annual
college rankings by U.S. News and World Report, says Fox. The
rankings have caused the top schools to engage in an "enrollment
management process" so that they can maintain their stature.
"They use very complicated matrixes to figure out who to market to, they do data mining, they have statistical models as to who they're marketing to, and what's the probability that a particular student will apply, or if they do apply, what's the probability that they will accept, and if we offer them X number of dollars, how much will that increase the probability that they'll accept," she says.
"The public has no idea of what's going on behind the scenes. It's big business. Various schools are fed up with it. They're frustrated, but they can't unilaterally stop because everyone else is doing it."
The drive for revenues causes schools to disburse funds to wealthier
families rather than families in need, she says. As an example,
if a school charges $20,000 for tuition, instead of giving a $20,000
scholarship to a family in need, the school will split it up into
four scholarships worth $5,000 apiece and offer it to families that
can well afford to pay the full ride. If they offer it to four families
that can pay the difference, they'll earn revenues of $240,000.
"Then it raises the academic profile of the school because they're able to attract four 'academically desirable' students, and that now raises their rankings in all the guides out there, which then causes more applications to come in, which then makes them more selective because a smaller number get accepted," she says. "It's a vicious circle. So this is what's causing, in many cases, this rise in tuition."
So college costs are going up in part because the schools are gaming their own system.
How can we play the game?
We are at an inherent disadvantage, having to play by rules that aren't easy to understand and paying an awful lot of money for the privilege. But the advantages of a college education are indisputable.
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