The University as Magician

Recently I enjoyed reading Andrew Delbanco’s article called The Universities in Trouble. It’s a well-researched review, nominally about five recent books that cover various aspects of higher education in United States, but actually focused on how colleges and universities are coping with current economic exigencies. It’s a good read.

Here I’d like to examine only one paragraph of Delbanco’s lengthy article, because he repeats an argument that universities have long made and which, frankly, sticks in my craw because it is so patently sleight-of-hand. I’ll tell you why shortly. But here’s the paragraph.

The prevailing financial model at private colleges is one by which relatively affluent students pay more than needy students, although even those who pay full “sticker price” (roughly $50,000 per year at a top-tier school) meet less than two thirds of the full cost of their own education—calculated as a proportional fraction of faculty and staff salaries, dormitory accommodations, dining, library, health, and athletic services, as well as overhead costs such as keeping the lights on, the heat flowing, and the buildings in good repair. In other words, all students in America’s private colleges—except for those at institutions run for profit, such as the University of Phoenix—are subsidized to one extent or another.

The calculation described is true enough. But the conclusion that universities subsidize students is specious.

At issue is who pays how much and for what. Students and their families should ask universities the following type of questions: “Why am I paying for the ‘load’ reductions of tenured faculty so they can do research and teach graduate seminars rather than teach my undergraduate introductory psychology course and its 200 students?”

In a more general form, this question becomes “Why do students pay for things they did not request, do not want, and from which they do not benefit?”

I doubt there is a university in the United States that has data sufficiently rich to debit non-beneficial student omnibus payments from the overall subsidy calculation.

But that’s not really necessary to determine the outcome.

The truth is this. Students and their families subsidize the institutional aspirations of universities, and those aspirations all too often do not, or only marginally, benefit students.

For a case in point, consider a recent New York Times article As Costs of Sports Rise, Students Balk at Fees.

And the next time you hear a university talk about how they subsidize students’ educational experiences, forget the words and focus on the hands. It’s magic.