My life in academe: WSJ misses the point on college costs

When I was dean at Loyola and the college market was growing like Amazon or Tesla stock, Loyola was one of the school that chose to attempt to elevate its image in the eyes of the brand-conscious parent of a prospective college student by raising tuition rapidly, to replace it's low tuition model indicative of its blue-collar roots -- an inexpensive accounting degree for the son of a steel worker to pull the family higher on the economic ladder, i.e., the American Dream -- with an image of a more prestigious university, a tuition more in line with Harvard than with a traditional, urban, commuter college, i.e., "At this price, they must be good."

Loyola did more than that. We also aspired to increase both the numbers and the quality of our students and graduate programs, with larger entering classes and higher SAT scores each year, showing that we were more selective, not just more expensive, more or less trying to prove that we deserved the image of a prestigious school, with both higher tuition and higher academic standards. The inside joke for alums around the administrative table was that they would not be qualified to be admitted under today's standards, "This is not your father's Loyola," so to speak.

The unintended but seemingly obvious consequence was that Loyola needed more applicants from wealthier families with higher SAT scores (which, critics suggest, are two highly correlated numbers), which then led -- over time -- to the obvious conclusion that Loyola was not going to be "affordable" to lower-income students. Recognizing this flaw in the strategy hid the other undeniable truth, i.e., while high-tuition Loyola might be "affordable" to high-income families, that does not mean that they were unwilling to look elsewhere for a better deal.

How Baylor Steered Lower-Income Parents to Debt They Couldn’t Afford - WSJ.pdf

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The result? Nominal tuition surged/spiked more than Covid rates in a New York City hospital in April 2020. But net revenues, not so much. Why? Unlike the richly endowed schools, those aspiring schools with little endowment to use for financial aid, resorted to loans and recycled tuition money from the "full payers" to make their colleges "affordable" to low-income families and "unattractive" to higher-income families with options, who could shop for a better deal offered by other aspiring colleges. Financial aid became a weapon in a de facto price war, with schools offering discounts to meet or beat offers from schools competing in the same death match ring.

Add in the desire to create a more 'diverse' -- inclusive, tolerant, equitable -- student population, colleges implicitly -- but not publicly -- acknowledged that underrepresented minorities were also likely to be from lower-income families, which also usually meant that they attended inferior public schools, had little or no chance to take AP courses, and suffered from 'discriminatory" standardized testing like the SAT and the ACT. Meanwhile, high school grades inflated just as college grades had done earlier, and about half of high school grades were A- or higher, while the actual high school curriculum was watered down, with lower expectations in key competitive academic areas such as writing and mathematics.

The result? Don't pick out Baylor. They're just a very minor player in the much larger world of watered down college admissions and academics, inflated tuition, almost two trillion dollars of college graduate debt, and political gamesmanship over equal opportunity and equitable/equal outcomes. And it's not college athletics or professors' salaries that are the real problem (although there are plenty of overpaid, tenured faculty), the true budget disasters are administration and financial aid. In general, the percent of a college's spending devoted to teaching has been declining, while it has climbed for aid and administration, especially in non-academic administration, meaning administrators who have nothing to do with delivering the education that tuition was intended to fund.

Sure, colleges would be better off without expensive athletic programs and scholarships, and it will only get worse if college athletes have to be paid, treated as employees, and allowed to organize and to sell the rights to their own images. Rather than think in terms of what needs to be cut, any university would be well-served to first, re-examine their mission statement and be sure that it attends primarily to the traditional mission of seeking truth and knowledge through discourse. Second, build the college up from its core responsibilities, recognize the cost to deliver that responsibility, and add only those non-essential responsibilities that student's need and are willing to pay for.

As dean, I often noted that success in my role required three things: a strong sense of mission, an excellent grasp of the numbers, and a good sense of humor. Nothing I have seen would lead me to think that this strategy is outdated. It might just be out of tune with the current culture and climate on college campuses today. Great to be gone!