Search results for: “College Fees”
-
Consumer Transparency for Virginia Colleges
Del. Tim Hugo, R-Centreville, has submitted a bill, HB 1980, that would bring more consumer transparency to Virginia’s higher education system. The bill would require all public four-year colleges and universities to maintain a tab or link labeled “Consumer Information” on the home pages of their websites. That tab or link would be updated annually and…
-
End Student Subsidies for College Athletics
by James A. Bacon House Majority Leader Kirk Cox, R-Colonial Heights, is intimately acquainted with the high and rising cost of higher education in Virginia. His two oldest have graduated from Longwood University and James Madison University, and he has two high-schoolers on the way. Not surprisingly, he describes himself as “stressed and anxious” about…
-
Debt and Deferred Maintenance at Virginia Colleges
by James A. Bacon Above, readers will find the chart I called for in yesterdays blog post: the debt burden of Virginia colleges and universities as a percentage of their budgeted revenues. The higher the debt-to-revenue ratio, the more leveraged the institution and, hence, the greater the risk of financial difficulties if and when student enrollments decline. This…
-
How Not to Spend Public College Money
By Peter Galuszka As Virginia’s students and their families struggle paying their tuition and related expenses, the state’s 15 public universities continue to charge excessively for mandatory fees for athletics and massive bricks and mortars projects. These are the conclusions by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) which has issued a series of…
-
Virginia College Enrollments Decline, SCHEV Wants Higher Tuitions
by James A. Bacon Yesterday, when asking how long Virginia universities could defy the national decline in student enrollments, I spoke just a hair too soon. I quoted 2012-2013 data to the effect that Virginia public higher education institutions were holding their own. Unbeknownst to me, the State Council on Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) was…
-
How Long Can Virginia Colleges Defy the Enrollment Turndown?
How will Virginia colleges and universities fare going forward against a national backdrop of declining college enrollment? Luke Juday offers an interesting perspective at the Stat Chat blog, noting that the post-18-year-old age cohort is expected to shrink over the next two decades. Writes Juday: If we think about the graduating high school seniors who might be…
-
Redistributing the Wealth: College Tuition
by James A. Bacon In the on-going sparring between left and right over inequality in the United States, the left has succeeded in framing the debate by defining the issue as income inequality, as in income reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Conservatives have countered that IRS income does not include income generated through the…
-
The Black Hole of College Finances: Athletics
by James A. Bacon Of the 269 sports programs at Virginia’s 15 public colleges and universities, only four pay their own way — the Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia football and basketball programs. The rest lose money and are subsidized by mandatory student fees equivalent to 12% of tuition and fees in 2011-2012,…
-
Athletics and Debt Driving up Virginia College Costs
There are two broad conclusions worth noting from the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission’s meaty new report on higher education costs: Spending increases at public Virginia colleges and universities have been led by auxiliary enterprises, primarily athletic programs, not the academic programs funded by the state. Athletic programs consume on average 12% of tuition…
-
The Eroding Value of the College Sheepskin
by James A. Bacon Thanks to college inflation, Grade Point Averages (GPAs) don’t reveal as much as they once did. The percentage of As given by college and university professors has nearly tripled between 1940 and 2008, according to a 2012 study of 200 four-year educational institutions. Even a college diploma is more a mark…
-
IG of the Day: Virginia Colleges More Unaffordable than Ever
The plundering of the middle class continues unabated. The State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) has tallied the numbers and found that in-state undergraduates at Virginia’s public colleges and universities will see a 5.1% average increase in tuition and fees this fall. That exceeds last year’s 4.5% rise, despite an additional $25 million…
-
Don’t Look Over Your Shoulder, Richard Bland College May Be Gaining on You
by James A. Bacon While Virginia’s largest public universities continue to jack up tuition at rates far surpassing inflation and the growth in wages in order to protect Business-As-Usual education, the state’s tiniest public institution of higher education is experimenting with hybrid online learning. Petersburg-based Richard Bland College has launched a global online institute that…
-
Empowering College Students with Better Consumer Data
There is a big move afoot in Congress to make salary information of college graduates more readily available to the public. The idea is to give students a realistic idea of how much they can expect to earn when they apply to a school that will cost them $100,000 or up in tuition and fees.…
-
The Case For Transportation User Fees
by James A. Bacon Say this about Governor Bob McDonnell’s plan to scrap the gasoline tax and substitute a sales tax to fund transportation: Virginia has plenty of company around the country when it come to abandoning the user-pays principle. Americans apparently consider free roads, bridges and highways as an inalienable birth right — right…
-
College Exploitation of Students Still Intensifying — but at a Slower Rate
Students heading to public Virginia colleges and universities this fall can take some consolation that the increase in tuition and fees they will have to swallow will be “only” 4.1% — barely half the previous year’s increase of 7.9%. Adjusted for a 1.7% increase in the Consumer Price Index, that’s a real increase of “only”…