Without question, higher education in the US is too expensive, and this situation is only getting worse. Rising expenses fuels the secondary problem of rising student loan debt, which has become such an issue that it's now commonplace to question the very "value" of a college education.
For those who don't know anything about a university budget, it's easy to conjure a picture of elitist, tenured professors stretched out in leather recliners in their spacious offices, drifting off for afternoon naps, while students and their families go into unsustainable debt while struggling to pay for college. The repugnant Naomi Scheafer Riley plays upon this stereotype in the title of her book, The Faculty Lounges. But the idea that faculty salaries are fueling the increase in higher education expenses is simply untenable, easily disproved by a short look at any university budget throughout the country.
You'll perhaps notice that I'm favoring the word "expense" instead of "cost," because the truth is that a world-leading college education doesn't have to cost what it does; it's as expensive as it is currently because those who run universities are running them at a budget so far above the cost of their central mission that speaking of the "cost" of higher education is simply a misnomer.
Faculty pay has remained relatively stagnant for years, increasing below the rate of inflation and below the median wage increase for all US workers. At the same time, university expenditures on buildings, nonacademic resources, and administrative salaries have gone through the roof, increasing in some cases by hundreds of percentage points in recent decades. Even as universities try to trim their budgets in the face of high expenditures and growing student loan debt, administrative salaries grow while faculty salaries remain stagnant.
Anecdotally, many who have gone to college in the last decade or so will have noticed how little the pristine campus on visitors' day resembled the construction-engulfed campus on which you actually spent your college career. Outside the window of my university office the most common noises are jackhammers and football scores on the stadium loudspeaker, and the most common sights are cranes and orange blockades.
For someone of my generation, however, this is just life as usual at a US university. As a student I certainly enjoyed some of the amenities that, erected by the time I studied at my college, would have plagued students before me during a "quiet" afternoon of studying, just as the next generation of new building projects plagued my generation of students. As a faculty member today, then, I'm used to the jackhammering and the cranes beeping outside my window, but I'm still not convinced that this is always as necessary to a college education as I might have assumed in my youth.
But the question all along has been one of expense, never mind the cost of having such constant distractions on campus. When we talk about high tuition that only increases year to year, then, we're talking about these kinds of extraneous expenditures: a new dean or sub-dean or deputy-dean or tertiary dean of student affairs; a new director of this or that; a new, rent-seeking luxury student living complex; a new gym with televisions on the treadmills.
So if you're thinking about sending someone to college, and you're exploring the expenditures versus the rewards, pay close attention to what it is that you'd be paying for. And when you fret about the costs of higher education, think carefully about whether you're paying for an education or a four-year fantasy fun camp. Tragically, as a consumer, what you pay for will dictate what the college experience looks like. You have every right to complain about high tuition expenses, because tuition is needlessly expensive right now. But remember this, too, when you're getting your campus tour.
