The Huge Disconnect about Money in Education

To continue with the theme of using experience in higher education as instructive for independent schools, a June 29, 2009, blog entry in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Beckie Supiano stands out, not for its content so much as for the comments it engendered.  Supiano merely reports that the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities finds the average private institution tuition increase for 2009-20 to be 4.3%, well below the 6%+ 10-year average (and also right in line with the 2.5-4.5% increases we have been seeing many of in independent schools). The comments, presumably left by college and university administrators, faculty and graduate students (not that many others read the Chronicle), expressed varying degrees of outrage at even the 4.3% number.

That those on the education inside seem so unaware of the drivers behind academic finance is one surprise.  Another is that despite horror over tuition increases, the faculty, one would assume, continue to want salary increases, as well as the full package of benefits that most schools provide--increases that must be paid for through some mechanism. What this seems to illustrate anew is the huge disconnect in our larger society between infrastructure and services and money. And it is this disconnect--the widely-held belief that airports, bridges and roads, along with universities, are good things that should be paid for by somebody else--that leads our customers (and sometimes our faculty) to assume that even historically modest tuition increases are excessive. We--along with our civil society--is behind the proverbial 8-ball until we find a way to fix this disconnect.

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