UPDATE: I am advised that this was the closest vote in 20 years on a tuition increase: 5-4.\u00a0 I don’t have the names of those who had the courage to vote No, but kudos to them for doing so.\u00a0 Even though Regents are elected, it’s relatively easy for them to roll over to an appointed administration on tuition votes, especially given the (at least perceived) centrality of higher education to opportunity for advancement.<\/em><\/p>\n The CU Regents have approved a 9.3% tuition increase for in-state students, and a 3% increase for out-of-state students.\u00a0 No doubt it’ll take special scientific instruments to measure the time that elapsed between this announcement and certain legislators’ bemoaning the fact that we “don’t fund higher ed.”\u00a0 But higher ed, even here in Colorado, has done a pretty terrible job of accounting exactly what<\/em> it is we’re supposed to be funding.<\/p>\n The core mission of the university is the education of students, culminating in a degree that is supposed to represent the mastery of the material.\u00a0 It is almost impossible to get a straight answer as to what that actually costs.\u00a0 Go to the CU website, and you’ll be provided with a wealth of information about their sources of funding.\u00a0 Detailed information about spending<\/em> is almost impossible to find.<\/p>\n Part of the problem, of course, is that the university is like a huge conglomerate corporation.\u00a0 It’s got multiple missions, and multiple sources of income, and it doesn’t really make any sense to directly match tuition, room, and board to the cost of educating undergraduates.\u00a0 Also, the price of an item doesn’t really have to be closely related to the cost of providing it.\u00a0 If you can persuade people that a CU degree will be worth $100,000 to them (compared to not having a degree at all), then they’ll pay that, even if the margins turn out to be substantial.<\/p>\n So there are a number of factors feeding into the higher-ed bubble.\u00a0 Schools that would rather brand themselves<\/a> than teach.\u00a0 A pedagogical model that hasn’t developed since colleges were created, that’s also spawning some innovation:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And now you see why traditional colleges find for-profit schools so threatening, and why their friends in the administration have worked to hard<\/a> to regulate them into, ah, competitive balance. And why their initial reaction was to ridicule the $10,000 bachelors, which looks like an attainable goal as well<\/a>.\u00a0 Because when compared, side-by-side, with institutions who do<\/em> match the price and the cost of an undergraduate education, and who often have students living at home rather than frat houses, the traditional university rather suffers by that comparison.<\/p>\n (As a side-note, it now looks as though some of those greedy, corrupt, Wall Street Khan notes something important: credentialing is different from mastery of the material.\u00a0 The Ivy Leagues will always command attention and status.\u00a0 But most people aren’t going there, anyway.speculators<\/del> <\/span>short-sellers got some information about which for-profit institutions were going to get hammered.\u00a0 Good luck, CREW, with that subpoena<\/a>.\u00a0 If they follow the Justice Department model, you’ll get a pad of blank trading slips.\u00a0 And given the Administration’s history with troublesome IGs, I’d be careful there, Ms. Tighe<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
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