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Since 1978, the cost of attending college in America has increased 1,120 percent. And as you can see in this infrographic the financial model for higher education looks broken, as tuition costs are rising faster than inflation. This infographic breaks down the small fortunes that students are investing in their academic lives—implicitly asking why it has to be this way, and explicitly advising future students on how to minimize their debt.
» via Fast Company
And don’t forget: your interest rates on your student loan debt is set to double on July 1.
Student services are growing, but mostly the government is defunding education. Additionally, athletics is a revenue generating system that puts its money towards paying $1 million salaries for head coaches (normally more than the president of the institution.
Colleges are non-profit organizations, but they have high operating costs. Many colleges work hard to reduce the cost for their students, only raising tuition slightly. Unfortunately, the state and federal governments don’t understand how colleges work. They say “tuition is so high, you don’t need our help” and then cut funding. The college has no choice but to raise tuition, or decrease services. If they decrease services, the become less competitive and attract less student.
29th April 2013
Reblogged From kristinmargaret
Notes: 2401
(Source: mylovelybrighteyes)
An open letter to public education (x)
“Branding and academia may seem like uncomfortable bedfellows. Creating a brand is a fundamentally reductionist process, distilling complex concepts into short words and simple visuals, while academia celebrates detail and discourse.”
We need to stop worrying about brands, and start looking at online identity. This isn’t a billboard or advertisement; Schools use the internet for a large portion of their interactions with students. Yes it should reflect positively on the institution, but it is more complex than branding.
Here is a possible joint venture: Why don’t the professors help the teachers persuade public high schools to teach research with required projects? That might raise the quality of the first year of college in a way that would please AP teachers who see the students off and the college instructors who greet them.
App Academy in San Francisco (and now New York) offers a 9-week, 90-hours-a-week boot camp to turn programming novices into code jockeys. They just graduated their second class last Friday. Of the fifteen students to graduate from the first class, fourteen have found jobs, co-founder Kush Patel says. Typical annual salary, he says: more than $80,000.
“We don’t want to charge up front because we feel pretty strongly about tying the payment to the outcome,” says Patel. “If they can’t find a job, we’ve screwed up somehow.”
New recruits signing up for App Academy promise to pay 15 percent of what they earn during their first year on the job, payable over the first six months after they start working. For the school, the math isn’t too shabby if they succeed at placing their students. If 15 students get jobs at $80,000 salaries, that works out to a $180,000 commission.
What do you think of this model? Would you consider this outcome based education, or college-income based education?
This is a school that is really investing in it’s students.
This chart from The Atlantic is a deeply disturbing reminder of how funding has changed for higher education. Doing more with less is the name of the game. It used to be that public institutions could count on “state share of instruction” to offset their operating costs. However, that funding has withered away in recent years.
So, what’s the solution? Some places just raise tuition and pass the costs onto students. However, readers in the Buckeye state might be shocked to learn that while our funding has been cut by 28.9%, tuition costs have only raised by 2.8%. Most institutions are feeling the pain with hiring freezes and insufficient staffing. So, my question goes to you, dear readers. How would you fix the funding gap?
This morning I awoke to an article from the lovely Allie Grasgreen in InsideHigherEd. I had not attended Mr. Greto’s presentation, but I see his research as a call to action. The NASPA conference was filled with technology sessions that were all fantastic. Eric Stoller and Lisa Endersby did an amazing session on how to bring student affairs into the digital realm by being less punitive and more educational when dealing with electronic misconduct, and the Technology Knowledge Community hosted several social media centered events. So how does Mr. Greto’s session fit with the Bold Without Boundaries conference theme? In my opinion, it doesn’t.
For this session to be BOLD, it would need to move away from theory and research into practice. The research alone bolsters fear of the unknown, the digital age, the coming storm, change. Yes technology is changing the way we communicate; I have seen many groups out to dinner on their phones instead of interacting with one another. However, this technology allows me to post a blog entry from an Orlando hotel breakfast buffet, while readers all over the world can access my thoughts. Let’s not waste our time and energy on the side of fear, and let’s do something.
We could join the conversation. Instead of telling students to put away their phones, give them a hashtag so they can discuss the class on twitter. This may even be a great way to engage introverts. Students are already tweeting, now get them to tweet about your classes or services offered on campus. Respond to them on facebook and twitter when they @reply to your social media accounts. Reach out to them, and start conversations online.
Asking them to engage more with their universities online, but asking them to use it less in their personal lives doesn’t work, so we need to change the ways we use it. Let us teach people (in our words, and by example) to use social media responsibly. Time, place, and manner (TPM) are valuable lessons for everyone, but with social media we need to start raising expectations. Expecting our friends and families to put their phones away at dinner. Starting conversations with strangers, rather than playing a game on the iPhone, when we are bored in a public place. Furthermore, we need to teach students how to use TPM when they get in trouble for the things they post online. They already understand privacy settings for the most part. They know which posts to keep private, and how to hid the things they wish to conceal from their friends. Yet, they continue to post about that “wicked party last night” or “smoking up before a party.” The conversations we have should be centered in Moral Development Theory. Teach them a deeper way of thinking about the consequences of the things they post.
