Higher education.

Today’s NYT has a long piece on how the pandemic is impacting Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

I have a personal interest in IUP. But there’s something noteworthy about this story: it’s all the Republican’s fault.

After years of Republican-led pressure to reduce state spending, Pennsylvania gives nearly 34 percent less support per pupil now than it did in 2008, forcing students to pay a growing amount of tuition. This has further discouraged enrollment, causing a downward financial spiral, experts say. Now the pandemic has jolted the system.

Except:

Before there was an outbreak of Covid-19 at I.U.P., there had been an outbreak of Steinway pianos.
Ninety uprights, grands and other Steinways started showing up in rehearsal rooms and recital halls after a 2006 agreement between the school and the piano maker. Cost: $2.6 million.
Around the same time, nearly $250 million was invested in new dorms. “Suite-style housing — that’s what college students of today are looking for,” said Tony Atwater, the university’s president at the time. I.U.P. also broke ground on the 148,500-square-foot Kovalchick Convention and Athletic Complex, which cost more than $50 million.

…

To some at the college, the investments were ill-advised because enrollment trends seemed poised to fall, partly because of falling birthrates years before. That meant resources would become more precious.
“The faculty was yelling up and down, ‘This is not a good idea,’” said Jamie Martin, a professor of criminology at I.U.P. and the head of the union representing the faculty for all 14 schools in the state system. “You could see the demographics coming.”

But it’s the Republican’s fault:

When the 2008 recession hit, many states decimated the budgets for regional campuses of state schools. From that point through 2018, Pennsylvania’s funding per student for higher education fell 33.8 percent, among the steepest declines in the country. In inflation-adjusted terms, the state gives these schools about $220 million less annually than it did in 2000-1.

…

In a nutshell, the burden for supporting the system shifted sharply — from the state to the student. In the 1980s, the state paid 75 percent of a student’s load. Now the student pays nearly 75 percent.

But:

Tuition is only about half the cost of attending one of the system’s 14 schools. At I.U.P., the new dorms led to a stiff hike for residents; the old dorms in 2007-8 cost a student $1,670 per semester, while the new suites ranged in cost from $3,000 to nearly $4,000 per semester.
By last year, the cost for the least-expensive living situation, least-expensive meal plan and tuition exceeded $21,000 a year.

But:

The budget numbers tell a complex story. By some measures, the system is not particularly unhealthy.
For 2019, the last fiscal year available, the entire system lost just $1 million, out of $1.6 billion in expenses. Depending on the accounting method used, I.U.P. itself might have made money, according to a union official.

There’s more to the story, of course, and I’m just hitting the high points. I’d suggest you go check it out for yourself.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 28th, 2020 at 9:10 am and is filed under Clippings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Higher education.”

  1. pigpen51 says:
    December 28, 2020 at 1:30 pm

    I have been saying for awhile now that the reason that these universities have been spending so much on their buildings, pianos, etc. is because the federal government backs student loans. Thus, banks will loan money for college to anyone, no matter their ability to pay it back, because they know that their investment is guaranteed.
    So they build these Taj Mahal type dorms, and convention and athletic centers to attempt to attract more and more students, to pay for ever more buildings and to pay for “elite” professors, that students want to sit in for their classes.