THERE IS a fundamental law of economics which says that the more money there is chasing a finite quantity of goods, the higher the final price of that good will rise. In the university setting, this law is readily apparent as limited capacity and a rising college-bound population inevitably leads to rising tuition costs and larger student debt. However, increased financial aid, which seems to be an easy fix for this problem, may in fact only worsen it.
Instead of the government pumping more money into the education market to match rising prices, the University and other colleges shouldlook at how efficiently current capacity is being used. Rather than look to the government to solve our problems and give students more money, students and parents should look to the nation's schools to better utilize what they have and thus bring tuition rates down to more manageable levels.
Last Thursday, The Cavalier Daily reported that the average loan debt of students has doubled over the past decade, and that this has caused a crisis by forcing students away from generally lower-paying but socially important jobs such as teaching. In sum, according the University's Web site approximately 55 percent of in-state and 51 percent of out-of-state first years received some form of aid in 2005-2006 averaging, $7,818 and $17,841 respectively. These numbers simply do not make sense from any financial perspective. After all, half of the country does not receive free money whenever they want to buy a house or car. Instead, the market for these and any goods creates a price at which demand is satisfied.
Education is of course one of the most important determinants of one's career path and lifetime earnings, and helping provide it is one of the few areas where government should legitimately step in. However, the government, students and universities all face an imbalanced market where the price of education -- i.e. tuition -- has been inflated and the only short term solution seems to be either taking out loans or providing more financial aid. This, however, is exactly the wrong approach to take because it creates more long-term problems than it does short-term solutions and will simply inflate tuition prices even further.
Jonathan Grayer, chairman of Kaplan, Inc., argued in a recent college affordability discussion that we must "[seek] to change colleges' practices to 'really get at the affordability question in higher education'" instead of simply finding ways to bring in more money. Through a series of papers and discussions, the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education seems to have come to the same conclusion. One "idea that would never come to be," proposed by Richard Vedder, a professor at the University of Ohio, was to focus on a single federally-administered system that would "nearly double the current maximum Pell Grant." Instead, several committee members hit the nail on the head by pushing efforts "that could truly bring down colleges' costs, by reducing what they spend to educate students." In other words, make schools more efficient.
According to Insidehigered.com, one of the Commission's more recent papers argues that the tenure system removes requirements and accountability on professors, leading to smaller and fewer classes while burdening colleges with large long-term salary costs. This inefficiency requires universities to hire even more professors and TAs to take up the slack and meet student demands. Finally, the commission points to what it calls a "faculty-driven scheduling system" which makes poor use existing space and leads to many schedule conflicts for students.
Fortunately, the University seems to be better off than most when it comes to this problem. After all, professors almost always teach their classes in person and there are a wide variety of early morning classes available. University Spokesperson Carol Wood said in an interview that what sets the University apart is that "there is such an emphasis on teaching and being in the classroom." Nonetheless, there is undoubtedly some relavence to the commission's argument, and there are certainly areas in which the University could improve -- most importantly in designing future construction projects to make larger classrooms more available, not just making better use of existing space and faculty.
The fundamental problem of rising tuition costs cannot be solved by simply throwing more money into the pot. This will only lead to even more inflated prices. Instead, the University should look at how it is using its current space and staff and where there is room for improvement. Finally, the University should take this into consideration when planning for future construction projects to provide more and larger spaces in which classes can be held. Overall it is essential that the University and the nation's other schools consider long-term, rather than short-term solutions.
Allan Cruickshanks is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at acruickshanks@cavalierdaily.com.
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