Mr. SWAC
F*** THE LAKERS!!!!!!
Tuition hikes hurt poorer families the most.
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College expense is rising sharply
07/21/02
By JEFF AMY
Staff Reporter
The tolls are going up again on the road to a bright future for Alabama college students.
Of the 16 public universities in Alabama, 15 are increasing their tuition and mandatory fees this fall, according to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education and Mobile Register research. The median increase of 7.16 percent for undergraduate Alabama residents will mark a fourth year of significant bumps.
Rates for resident graduate students will increase by a similar percentage, and rates for non-resident students will increase by more.
Since the end of the 1998-1999 academic year, the median resident undergraduate tuition at Alabama public colleges has gone up almost 43 percent, according to ACHE figures.
Although some university administrators say they want to keep tuition as low as possible, most say the increases have been necessary to pay more to employees and cover increased costs in the face of weak state funding growth.
"We essentially haven't gotten any money from the state for quite some time," said Bill Fielding, Jacksonville State University's acting vice president for administration and business affairs.
Left largely unremarked though, is that through good economic times and bad, the spiraling cost of tuition is eroding the ability of Alabamians to afford higher education, even as surveys show college and graduate degrees are a key indicator of economic prosperity later in life.
In the fall of 1992, a year of college tuition and fees cost an Alabama family of four 4.3 percent of their income. This fall, it will cost 6.86 percent of family income. And that measure doesn't count room and board, books or any other expenses.
Experts say the cost increases fall most heavily on the poor, a trend compounded by what several studies have found to be Alabama's stinginess with financial aid.
"You're just driving that sector further and further away from a college degree," said Gordon Stone, executive director of Alabama's Higher Education Partnership. Colleges formed the group to lobby state government for more money.
The University of South Alabama, the three campuses of the University of Alabama system, and some other institutions said the prime reason for increasing the price tag was to provide raises for faculty members.
"In two of the last five years, we've not been able to fund a general salary increase for our staff," said Kent Kay, vice chancellor for financial affairs of the 40,000-student University of Alabama system.
The Legislature decreed 3 percent across-the-board pay raises for state employees and K-12 education employees last year. Lawmakers said that colleges had to give raises to employees equal to the amount of new money each institution received but didn't decree 3 percent growth.
And it's a good thing, too, because with the exception of Alabama State University, no school got enough new money from the state to grant such a raise using only state funds. Most got only enough to bump overall salaries by 2.5 percent. State colleges typically don't distribute salary increases equally, instead trying to make sure everyone gets something but that the best professors and employees get more.
University presidents held a news conference during the most recent legislative session to bemoan lawmakers giving them less additional money than K-12 schools. Alabama colleges have battled for what they say is their fair share of funding for much of the past decade. Changes enacted in 1995 under Gov. Fob James increased the share of state education money going to K-12 schools, and public universities say they've been starving ever since.
"The state appropriation has been basically flat," said Wayne Davis, vice president for financial affairs at USA, which has about 12,000 students. "We try to do the best we can, lobbying in Montgomery. That basically leaves tuition as the other place to go to."
The political struggle between K-12 and colleges is in some ways particular to Alabama. But public universities nationwide have increased their reliance on tuition as state aid has filled smaller portions of budgets, said Tom Wolanin, a senior associate with the Institute for Higher Education Policy, based in Washington, D.C.
"Decreasing state support causes rising tuition in state institutions," Wolanin said.
The crunch has been aggravated by the economic slowdown that began in 2000 in Alabama. The troubles manifested themselves here with mid-year budget cuts in 2001 and anemic state revenue growth since.
"When the economy slows, as it did, state budgets are squeezed," said Travis Reindl, director of state policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "And colleges and universities are the biggest single discretionary item states have in their budget."
Despite relatively low increases in state money this year, USA, the Alabama system and Auburn University all decided to give their employees raises equivalent to 5 percent of the current salary base, instead of the 3 percent raises that state and school employees will get. Those three institutions include the four largest campuses in Alabama.
Administrators said raises, which probably wouldn't have been possible without tuition increases ranging between 5.6 percent and 12 percent at those universities, were necessary to bolster low faculty and staff salaries.
According to a 2000 survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, faculty at Alabama public colleges made an average of $49,640 a year, second lowest in an 11-state Southeastern region, and 10 percent below the regional average of $55,353. Administrators say to keep good professors or hire new ones, they have to pay more. Most universities are aiming to pay at least the regional average.
"You've got to pay competitive salaries, and you've got to compete nationally," said Pat Covey, USA's senior vice president for academic affairs. "We want to try to reward the hard work of our faculty, and you simply can't go on, year-after-year, and not give a salary increase."
In deciding how much to increase tuition, most institutions said they compare themselves to an average of other colleges in the South they believe to be similar.
A few institutions said it's part of their mission to resist tuition increases. Alabama State, for example, has the lowest full-time tuition in the state and didn't raise it this year. Spokeswoman Julie Debardelaben said that's because students at the historically black institution are from less affluent families than typical Alabama college students.
JSU's Fielding said his college also historically has believed in low costs for all.
"We have always tried to keep our tuition level lower, so it's not such a terrible detriment to the student," he said.
But some other smaller colleges are increasing tuition more than Alabama and Auburn, the state's traditional flagships. For example, Huntsville's 5,500-student Alabama A&M University, which is the state's other historically black public college, imposed the largest increases -- 16.4 percent for in-state undergraduates. An Alabama A&M finance official did not return repeated phone calls seeking to discuss the increase, which brought in-state undergraduate tuition to $4,190, second-highest in the state.
The University of Montevallo, just south of Birmingham, will charge Alabama's highest college tuition for in-state residents this fall -- $4,334. Montevallo spokeswoman Cynthia Shackelford said the high charges are necessary because of the 3,000-student school's focus on the liberal arts, saying small class sizes cost more money.
Riendl said most colleges rely on averages, because they're "politically acceptable." But as institutions increase charges to meet an average, the target moves upward, sometimes dramatically so.
For example, trustees at Auburn -- whose 22,500-student main campus is Alabama's largest university -- decreed three years ago that they wanted to increase tuition to a regional average of large state universities.
When it came time to set this fall's charges, though, other universities in the comparison group had raised their charges so much that Auburn had fallen off its path to the target average. So trustees decreed back-to-back 12 percent tuition increases in an effort to reach the average.
"Even when we would go up, the region would go up a lot more than we thought they would," said Don Large, Auburn's executive vice president.
Some Auburn officials are almost defiant about the increases, which go in part to improve chosen university programs. They say students continue to flock to Auburn, indicating it must be a good value even at a higher price.
"There are some who would argue that we have not priced our product according to its true value," said John Pritchett, Auburn's provost.
The market for college education seems remarkably insensitive to price. Median public college tuition in Alabama has increased 118 percent from 1992 to this fall, according to ACHE. By comparison, inflation in the Southeast during that time, according to Census Bureau figures, was 23 percent. Median income for a family of four has grown 37 percent.
Reindl said it's not fair to compare college costs to the general rate of inflation known as the consumer price index, because that inflation yardstick measures the price of goods while most education costs are for salaries. Also, goods that colleges purchase, such as library journals and laboratory chemicals, can be highly specialized.
A private firm, Research Associates of Washington, keeps a separate inflation index for colleges, known as the higher education price index. Prices for goods and services purchased by colleges increased 154 percent from 1980 to 2000, according to this measure, while general inflation measured by the consumer index was 118 percent.
Riendl suggests colleges should measure against family income, a calculation that only Auburn said it considered when the Register surveyed state colleges about how they set tuition rates.
The increasing part of family income demanded to meet college tuition is probably affordable for rich and many middle class families, said Riendl, but for poorer students, it may be a serious blow.
"For low and moderate income students, their ability to pay for higher education has declined compared to college costs in the last decade," said Wolanin, of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
That's especially true in Alabama, which offers little to supplement the Pell Grant program, the main federal aid for poor students. According to a 2002 study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, state grant aid per student decreased 46 percent, from $84 to $46, over the last decade. State spending on aid to low income students equals 1 percent of federal Pell Grant aid distributed in the state.
The same think tank gave Alabama a "D" for affordability of college in a 2000 study, noting that all Alabama families pay 50 percent more of their income for college expenses than the best states, and that poor families pay twice as high a share of their incomes for college expenses than in the top states.
According to a 2002 study by the Higher Education Project, which lobbies for more federal money for students, the typical American student now graduates with $16,928 in federal student loan debt. The amount of non-loan aid that students receive has decreased by almost 33 percent since 1982, and that amount could sink even lower, as this year's federal budget troubles have threatened Pell Grant funding.
Even for the poorest though, college remains a must, and may be worth the debt. According to a Census Bureau report released Friday, students who earned a four-year degree stood to make about $2.1 million over their working lives, while high school graduates will make about $1.2 million or 57 percent of the college graduate's income.
Those with graduate degrees will make even more -- an average of $2.5 million for a master's degree holder, $3.4 million for someone earning a doctorate and $4.4 million for a professional degree holder, such as a lawyer or a doctor.
Those economic benefits may explain why the demand for higher education seems to remain constant, even through steep price increases, said Riendl.
"Public higher education is still one of the best investments out there."
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-------------------------------------------------
? More From Today's Mobile Register
? Mobile/Baldwin County primary results by precinct
News
College expense is rising sharply
07/21/02
By JEFF AMY
Staff Reporter
The tolls are going up again on the road to a bright future for Alabama college students.
Of the 16 public universities in Alabama, 15 are increasing their tuition and mandatory fees this fall, according to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education and Mobile Register research. The median increase of 7.16 percent for undergraduate Alabama residents will mark a fourth year of significant bumps.
Rates for resident graduate students will increase by a similar percentage, and rates for non-resident students will increase by more.
Since the end of the 1998-1999 academic year, the median resident undergraduate tuition at Alabama public colleges has gone up almost 43 percent, according to ACHE figures.
Although some university administrators say they want to keep tuition as low as possible, most say the increases have been necessary to pay more to employees and cover increased costs in the face of weak state funding growth.
"We essentially haven't gotten any money from the state for quite some time," said Bill Fielding, Jacksonville State University's acting vice president for administration and business affairs.
Left largely unremarked though, is that through good economic times and bad, the spiraling cost of tuition is eroding the ability of Alabamians to afford higher education, even as surveys show college and graduate degrees are a key indicator of economic prosperity later in life.
In the fall of 1992, a year of college tuition and fees cost an Alabama family of four 4.3 percent of their income. This fall, it will cost 6.86 percent of family income. And that measure doesn't count room and board, books or any other expenses.
Experts say the cost increases fall most heavily on the poor, a trend compounded by what several studies have found to be Alabama's stinginess with financial aid.
"You're just driving that sector further and further away from a college degree," said Gordon Stone, executive director of Alabama's Higher Education Partnership. Colleges formed the group to lobby state government for more money.
The University of South Alabama, the three campuses of the University of Alabama system, and some other institutions said the prime reason for increasing the price tag was to provide raises for faculty members.
"In two of the last five years, we've not been able to fund a general salary increase for our staff," said Kent Kay, vice chancellor for financial affairs of the 40,000-student University of Alabama system.
The Legislature decreed 3 percent across-the-board pay raises for state employees and K-12 education employees last year. Lawmakers said that colleges had to give raises to employees equal to the amount of new money each institution received but didn't decree 3 percent growth.
And it's a good thing, too, because with the exception of Alabama State University, no school got enough new money from the state to grant such a raise using only state funds. Most got only enough to bump overall salaries by 2.5 percent. State colleges typically don't distribute salary increases equally, instead trying to make sure everyone gets something but that the best professors and employees get more.
University presidents held a news conference during the most recent legislative session to bemoan lawmakers giving them less additional money than K-12 schools. Alabama colleges have battled for what they say is their fair share of funding for much of the past decade. Changes enacted in 1995 under Gov. Fob James increased the share of state education money going to K-12 schools, and public universities say they've been starving ever since.
"The state appropriation has been basically flat," said Wayne Davis, vice president for financial affairs at USA, which has about 12,000 students. "We try to do the best we can, lobbying in Montgomery. That basically leaves tuition as the other place to go to."
The political struggle between K-12 and colleges is in some ways particular to Alabama. But public universities nationwide have increased their reliance on tuition as state aid has filled smaller portions of budgets, said Tom Wolanin, a senior associate with the Institute for Higher Education Policy, based in Washington, D.C.
"Decreasing state support causes rising tuition in state institutions," Wolanin said.
The crunch has been aggravated by the economic slowdown that began in 2000 in Alabama. The troubles manifested themselves here with mid-year budget cuts in 2001 and anemic state revenue growth since.
"When the economy slows, as it did, state budgets are squeezed," said Travis Reindl, director of state policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. "And colleges and universities are the biggest single discretionary item states have in their budget."
Despite relatively low increases in state money this year, USA, the Alabama system and Auburn University all decided to give their employees raises equivalent to 5 percent of the current salary base, instead of the 3 percent raises that state and school employees will get. Those three institutions include the four largest campuses in Alabama.
Administrators said raises, which probably wouldn't have been possible without tuition increases ranging between 5.6 percent and 12 percent at those universities, were necessary to bolster low faculty and staff salaries.
According to a 2000 survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education, faculty at Alabama public colleges made an average of $49,640 a year, second lowest in an 11-state Southeastern region, and 10 percent below the regional average of $55,353. Administrators say to keep good professors or hire new ones, they have to pay more. Most universities are aiming to pay at least the regional average.
"You've got to pay competitive salaries, and you've got to compete nationally," said Pat Covey, USA's senior vice president for academic affairs. "We want to try to reward the hard work of our faculty, and you simply can't go on, year-after-year, and not give a salary increase."
In deciding how much to increase tuition, most institutions said they compare themselves to an average of other colleges in the South they believe to be similar.
A few institutions said it's part of their mission to resist tuition increases. Alabama State, for example, has the lowest full-time tuition in the state and didn't raise it this year. Spokeswoman Julie Debardelaben said that's because students at the historically black institution are from less affluent families than typical Alabama college students.
JSU's Fielding said his college also historically has believed in low costs for all.
"We have always tried to keep our tuition level lower, so it's not such a terrible detriment to the student," he said.
But some other smaller colleges are increasing tuition more than Alabama and Auburn, the state's traditional flagships. For example, Huntsville's 5,500-student Alabama A&M University, which is the state's other historically black public college, imposed the largest increases -- 16.4 percent for in-state undergraduates. An Alabama A&M finance official did not return repeated phone calls seeking to discuss the increase, which brought in-state undergraduate tuition to $4,190, second-highest in the state.
The University of Montevallo, just south of Birmingham, will charge Alabama's highest college tuition for in-state residents this fall -- $4,334. Montevallo spokeswoman Cynthia Shackelford said the high charges are necessary because of the 3,000-student school's focus on the liberal arts, saying small class sizes cost more money.
Riendl said most colleges rely on averages, because they're "politically acceptable." But as institutions increase charges to meet an average, the target moves upward, sometimes dramatically so.
For example, trustees at Auburn -- whose 22,500-student main campus is Alabama's largest university -- decreed three years ago that they wanted to increase tuition to a regional average of large state universities.
When it came time to set this fall's charges, though, other universities in the comparison group had raised their charges so much that Auburn had fallen off its path to the target average. So trustees decreed back-to-back 12 percent tuition increases in an effort to reach the average.
"Even when we would go up, the region would go up a lot more than we thought they would," said Don Large, Auburn's executive vice president.
Some Auburn officials are almost defiant about the increases, which go in part to improve chosen university programs. They say students continue to flock to Auburn, indicating it must be a good value even at a higher price.
"There are some who would argue that we have not priced our product according to its true value," said John Pritchett, Auburn's provost.
The market for college education seems remarkably insensitive to price. Median public college tuition in Alabama has increased 118 percent from 1992 to this fall, according to ACHE. By comparison, inflation in the Southeast during that time, according to Census Bureau figures, was 23 percent. Median income for a family of four has grown 37 percent.
Reindl said it's not fair to compare college costs to the general rate of inflation known as the consumer price index, because that inflation yardstick measures the price of goods while most education costs are for salaries. Also, goods that colleges purchase, such as library journals and laboratory chemicals, can be highly specialized.
A private firm, Research Associates of Washington, keeps a separate inflation index for colleges, known as the higher education price index. Prices for goods and services purchased by colleges increased 154 percent from 1980 to 2000, according to this measure, while general inflation measured by the consumer index was 118 percent.
Riendl suggests colleges should measure against family income, a calculation that only Auburn said it considered when the Register surveyed state colleges about how they set tuition rates.
The increasing part of family income demanded to meet college tuition is probably affordable for rich and many middle class families, said Riendl, but for poorer students, it may be a serious blow.
"For low and moderate income students, their ability to pay for higher education has declined compared to college costs in the last decade," said Wolanin, of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.
That's especially true in Alabama, which offers little to supplement the Pell Grant program, the main federal aid for poor students. According to a 2002 study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, state grant aid per student decreased 46 percent, from $84 to $46, over the last decade. State spending on aid to low income students equals 1 percent of federal Pell Grant aid distributed in the state.
The same think tank gave Alabama a "D" for affordability of college in a 2000 study, noting that all Alabama families pay 50 percent more of their income for college expenses than the best states, and that poor families pay twice as high a share of their incomes for college expenses than in the top states.
According to a 2002 study by the Higher Education Project, which lobbies for more federal money for students, the typical American student now graduates with $16,928 in federal student loan debt. The amount of non-loan aid that students receive has decreased by almost 33 percent since 1982, and that amount could sink even lower, as this year's federal budget troubles have threatened Pell Grant funding.
Even for the poorest though, college remains a must, and may be worth the debt. According to a Census Bureau report released Friday, students who earned a four-year degree stood to make about $2.1 million over their working lives, while high school graduates will make about $1.2 million or 57 percent of the college graduate's income.
Those with graduate degrees will make even more -- an average of $2.5 million for a master's degree holder, $3.4 million for someone earning a doctorate and $4.4 million for a professional degree holder, such as a lawyer or a doctor.
Those economic benefits may explain why the demand for higher education seems to remain constant, even through steep price increases, said Riendl.
"Public higher education is still one of the best investments out there."
? Send This Page | ? Print This Page
