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Relating to the discussion on tuition in this thread, here is a graph showing the rise in tuition vs. the consumer price index over the decades.http://consumerist.com/2010/09/when-will-the-college-tuition-bubble-burst.html
I may have posted this elsewhere but relevant here. My Sept. 1949 tuition at U.C. Berkeley was $37.50/semester, no charge for units, and $12.50 for a student body card that got us into games and events for free. S.F City College was $2.00 a semester because it was part of the city school system. My senior year residence at International House cost $62.50/month with meals and maid service.
The question then becomes why can't they do it similarly today. I cannot believe that college has to be as expensive as it is today. Where does all the money go?
I may have posted this elsewhere but relevant here. My Sept. 1949 tuition at U.C. Berkeley was $37.50/semester, no charge for units, and $12.50 for a student body card that got us into games and events for free. S.F City College was $2.00 a semester because it was part of the city school system. My senior year residence at International House cost $62.50/month with meals and maid service.
According to this inflation calculator, your tuition paid in 1949 is $347 in 2011 dollars, and your board/rent at International House is about $578 today.
The question then becomes why can't they do it similarly today. I cannot believe that college has to be as expensive as it is today. Where does all the money go?
My understanding that costs associated with college administration has contributed to the rise in tuition, as have the salaries paid to professors. We all know that universities are not just made up of classrooms anymore, but instead have offices of development, fund-raising, alumni relations, tech support, large-scale fitness centers, multiculturalism, women's centers, etc. Also, I think that with so many baby boomers at the end of their careers in academia, professors are earning more than they ever have.
New building projects and dorms have to be paid for too. In 1949, UCLA had only 7,000 students, Stanford about 5,000, and the State colleges about 5-7,000. Cal had 20,000 when I attended. I read in 1955 that only 6% of the entire USA had attended a college, and included those who had only one semester at a Jr. College. No SATS in those days either. A straight B aver got you into Cal or UCLA, C average for the State colleges. A high school diploma meant something in those days.
It's vitally important to interrogate (on a regular basis) the goals of higher education. Thanks for a riveting analysis or an important book that is certainly being discussed widely.
Who can afford a college textbook in the US when its price has risen faster than healthcare, house prices and inflation ?http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/why-are-college-textbooks-so-absurdly-expensive/266801/
Tell me about it. My textbooks cost somewhere around $75-100 a piece on average for the IT classes I am currently taking.
Funny, but when I was an undergrad in the mid-1990s I remember spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks, but then in my recent graduate classes over the past several years I was able to get by paying far less. One of the reasons is probably that graduates spend more time on individual articles and paperback specialty books than on heavy survey textbooks. Another problem is that new editions of those heavy texts are probably released unnecessarily. In the class I teach my department has determined the specific textbook, and last summer the publisher released a new (14th) edition. From what I can tell, aside from new page numbers, and maybe some different illustrations and slightly updated information, it's not much different from the 13th edition. So why did they release a new version? My students ask all the time if they can use an older/cheaper edition, and I tell them that is fine. So I am doing my part to stick it to the man.
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