Jacobsen asked the crowd about tuition bills when
they attended – old-timers cited $73.50 to $147.50 per semester. In 1990, it was still less than $1000 per
semester, at $920, while for 2012-13, it was $6,609 per semester. The change, he averred, is due to voters and
the Sacramento legislature deciding that students, not taxpayers, should foot
the bill for their education. He blamed
an unintended consequence of the federal Pell Grants that started in the 1970s.
Education costs across the nation were
ramping steeply; Pell Grants were initiated for lower income families at up to
$3000 per year, based on average Ivy League university costs.
Voilá! When public universities discovered that
money was being left on the table, they boosted their charges that could be
covered by such grants. Today forty to seventy percent of Pell Grants are used
at For-Profit colleges, that graduate a mere six percent of US college
graduates –Jacobsen gratuitously skipped that sordid little detail, a second
unintended consequence.
The impact of this Pell Grant funding shift was to alter the
charter of the university, which had been to educate the state’s youth and
train future faculty members, as well as make key contributions to the economic
and social well-being of the local community, the state of California, and the
nation. The state legislature for years funded the university and its mission,
in the process providing virtually free tuition for students as well as funded
research for community topics. The
Sacramento allotment today only covers about 7% of the $2.6 billion Berkeley
expense budget, down from 47% two decades ago.
Raised tuition fees for students cover half the gap. Diminished research on community issues,
seldom missed if not done, is the other casualty.
This seven-fold tuition hike in two decades is
the source of much student and parent agitation; never mind that annual Stanford,
Harvard, or MIT tuitions are $41,250, $37,576, and $40,732.
Faced with shrinking state government revenue,
the universities began coveting students who could pay out-of-state or
international student tuition, which at $17,960 per semester is three times as
high as in-state student rates (nearly comparable to the great private universities). As recently as ten years ago, only 4% of Cal
students were out-of-state; today he said that number is 10%, heading to a goal
of 20%, while total enrollment is capped.
This shift in tuition mix has already added 10% more revenue; getting to
20% ‘foreign students’ will yield 17% more. [1]
The argument presented by Jacobsen, however, was
considerably different – he opined that grads will be entering a global
‘marketplace’ and thus awareness and comfort with multiple cultures is an
imperative need for a comprehensive education.
Building a student mix with 20% from elsewhere serves this educational
need, he asserted. Checking the Cal website
later showed that two-thirds of today’s students have one or more foreign-born parents
– hummn.
The tuition discussion allowed Jacobsen to
address the question about whether a parent could ‘buy a slot for their
student’ by paying the out-of-state tuition.
He said that they’ve studied this greatly, and concluded that it would
have the effect of lowering the overall student average – in fact, he said that
the out-of-state enrollees are far more qualified than in-state admissions,
which means that if a parent’s child couldn’t ‘make the cut’, adding them via a
high tuition charge would clearly dilute the overall average of the incoming
student group.
[1] Actually, Jacobsen fudged quite a bit on
this set of statistics. The autumn 2012
class for Berkeley was 70% CA Residents; 17% Out of State, and 13% International. Compared to a decade ago, the increased
tuition percentage with this mix is 48%, quite heady. It also means that a steady-state run-rate
would cap Cal in-state enrollment to 17,500 students vs. 24,000 a decade ago.
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