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Curbing Competition in College Admissions
Writers on the topic of college admissions-present company included-give a lot of column space to discussion of how competitive it has become. The conversation typically follows a threadbare path. More applications=more rejections. Then, lots of speculation. Is college more expensive than it used to be? (Yes) Are more people applying to college? (Maybe) Are college degrees more valuable today than they were fifty years ago? (Debatable).
There are a couple of things that are somewhat certain. I'm no economist, but it's pretty easy to rustle up access to endowments for universities all over the country. You might not be shocked to know that big universities are big business. UCLA, a public school in California, has an endowment of nearly $2 billion. Billion. But it's got nothing on Harvard, which, in 2014, had an endowment of $36 billion. That's just staggering.
I'm no financial expert either, and I have no doubt that these universities have massive overhead costs. Harvard's own website discusses a $1.6 billion distribution for the fiscal year ending June 2015, acknowledging that that number represents approximately a third of Harvard's operating costs. I'm no math expert, but that leaves them a tidy sum in their financial portfolios.
I'm no politician, but I can't help but wonder why private institutions like Harvard dooesn't do a more effective job of spreading the wealth. Most public universities were created with the aim of educating the citizens of the states in which they reside. But their budgets are strained, and even public universities remain out of reach for many people.
Private institutions have the money to create scalable options for spreading the educational wealth. Why not offer more MOOCs? Extension programs? Public access to buy cheap generic ambien online their rich resources? Stanford boasts a 5% acceptance rate, but apparently does nothing to make that rate go up. Why not create more seats for applicants?
I'm just musing here, but in the current admissions climate, a discussion of higher-education profit is one that can't and shouldn't be avoided.
Labels: Curbing Competition in College Admissions
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