Choosing a College: A Primer for Tough Economic Times

College tuition has been going up at about twice the rate of inflation for years. Now that home prices have fallen and people are losing their jobs, what is the best advice to give about applying to college? Should everyone plan to go to college? Should some students stop out for a year while the economy recovers? What features of a college education are most important? How do you assess the quality of an education? What guides should you read?

I have been a college professor for 35 years, a college administrator for 15 of those 35 years, and a parent of two children who attended both public and private universities. I have taught at both private and public universities, served as an accreditation evaluator for one regional and one national accrediting agency, worked as a consultant to American and foreign universities, and written books on many aspects of education. Whenever I visit a college to give a paper or a lecture, or for any other reason, I keep my eyes open and ask the same questions I ask on an accreditation visit. I want to understand what value is being offered and where each college needs to examine its use of resources.

Make sure you have a good understanding of the total value of what the college offers. Learn the questions questions you should ask on campus visits. Make sure the school is accredited and take a look at college rankings. Another option to save money is considering an education in Canada, Britain or on the Continent.

Discover hos much a college education SHOULD cost, if you just count up the cost of buildings, faculty, labs and direct student services. One way that American college education is going to become more reasonable is by having lots of informed parents asking hard questions. The core values that inform this series are simple. American higher education is still the best in the world, but it is over-priced and getting out of reach. Working together, we can change that. In the mean time, by asking the right questions and sharing your conclusions with students and children, families can make wise choices with their education dollars. Your feedback and questions are of course welcome.

What does it really cost a college to offer its services? What's a benchmark that you can use to measure whether a college education is reasonable or too expensive?

Note: This is based on financial information from 2008.

If you started a new college from scratch, rented the buildings, kept the support staff lean but adequate, and hired well qualified faculty, you could offer an undergraduate education for about $12,000 a year in tuition. This calculation assumes that classes will be full, that classes will have about 30 students, and that laboratory sciences will depend on micro-experiment packages rather than fully equipped laboratories. Such a basic college would not have any sports facilities, and the library would rely heavily on electronic resources. Students would need to pay about another $8000 each year to share rented apartments and to cook their own food. So the total cost per year for a new school with no state support and no endowment would be about $20,000.

Community college and state university tuitions may cost less than $12,000 per year because those schools are subsidized by state governments. Some private universities cost less because they have large endowments and have made commitments to offer undergraduate education for less, or sometimes for nothing at all. Many universities cost more because they offer more in terms of laboratories, libraries, undergraduate research facilities, and other services.

Large universities that draw on endowment and grant income need every source of revenue to pay for institutes, graduate programs and other operations. Some of these operations may enhance the educational experiences of undergraduates. However, parents, counselors and students need to ask themselves exactly what they want to buy. You need to ask whether you want everything that is offered, and whether the price is reasonable for the services that you want.

Red Flags

Colleges and universities across America have come under increasing pressure to explain their costs, and as a consumer, or as a school official advising parents and students, it is important to be part of the dialogue that will help colleges decide what they should offer. If you are looking at colleges where the tuition, room and board costs run twice that baseline figure of $20,000, and where the schools have large endowments as well, it is doubly important to understand what you are getting and why you may choose to pay that price. If the quality of the university is worth it to you, you may consider paying such a high price, but make sure you know why.

Like any business, a college has to pay utility bills and health insurance. Beyond that, most colleges offer very sophisticated and expensive technological services. As a consumer, you want to examine what kinds of technology you are getting for your tuition dollar. I have visited colleges that cost over $40,000 per year where there were almost no computers or projectors in the classrooms. That's not a good buy.

You should now expect to see a computer; dvd, cd and vhs players, and overhead projector in every classroom. You should also have dorm room access to the internet and to the campus library collection, including direct access to e-books, electronic journals and library search tools. Many colleges also provide cable television, which can be a distraction. Do you need it? Do you really want to pay for it? None of this is free, because it ultimately ends up in your tuition bill.

The Staff

Many colleges are overstaffed when we take an imaginary tour of the back offices of a college. Often you are paying for beautiful grounds and a large crew of gardeners. Colleges know that the surroundings attract students and their parents. Colleges have increasingly offered services that resemble those of luxury hotels. In addition to the internet and cable access, there are gyms with the latest exercise equipment, personal trainers, and other amenities. When you go on the college tour, think about how much of these services you are willing to pay for, and carefully compare what each college offers for its tuition. One of the surprises in American higher education is the level of disconnect between service and price.

The Curriculum

You'll soon notice that some liberal arts colleges offer around 30 majors, while others market themselves on the basis of offering 40 or 50. Large research universities may teach upwards of 70 foreign languages. Smaller colleges are routinely criticized for trying to imitate the largest private and state research universities by offering large numbers of programs that are often inadequately supported by faculty or other resources. More is not necessarily better. If you are undecided between two or three possible careers or majors, then you ought to look at the strengths of those departments.

Word on any campus is that in your freshman year you gain fifteen pounds because of all the free food at the cafeteria. Some campuses have many different places to eat. Some have only one. And quality of food varies a lot. When you take a campus tour, you definitely want to check out the food service and ask yourself several key questions. First, do I really want to eat food like this every day? Second, is this quality and variety of food consistent with the amount I am being asked to pay?

Seriously, I have visited colleges where full tuition, room and board runs $20,000, and where the food is quite decent. On the other hand, I have visited colleges where the price is over $40,000, and the food is pathetic. I mean cold weiners and hamburgers for lunch, sugary cereal for breakfast, and mystery meat at dinner. There's something wrong when the price is high and the quality is low. It's a signal that you ought to look more carefully at the whole institution to see where the money is going.

How Colleges Buy Food

The quality of food on a campus is based on a formula that the college negotiates with the food service provider, which may be a national corporation. In recent years, the grocery bill per day, per student, has ranged from $2 or $3 at the low end to $6 or more at the high end. No one who leads your campus tour is going to be aware of these financial details.

When you buy in bulk, you can get a lot of food for those amounts of money. If the daily expense is low, it's hard for the school to provide many fresh and healthy choices. I consulted at one college where breakfast consisted of cold scrambled eggs, cold congealed bacon, cold red-eye gravy, and cold biscuits. When I suggested that any savings at the school might be put into the food plan, a VP took me aside and explained that the president was proud of the recent improvements in the food service. "Improved from what?," I thought.

Good food and a balance diet will help you to study hard. So look carefully at university food services. The best will offer food like luxury cruises; the worst will pile on the carbohydrates and low cost fats. And remember--a college's approach to the food service tells you a lot about its management and priorities.

Laboratories are among the most expensive facilities to maintain on American college campuses. In many fields, new technologies are being introduced so quickly that there is little hope that even the wealthiest and largest universities can keep up with the level of equipment available in private research firms. Moreover, highly specialized labs funded by government and private grants for the purpose of carrying out cutting edge research are not likely to be available for student use. The crunch is the same whether the labs are for physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, electrical engineering, computer science, psychology or other fields.

At a minimum, a college should have a lab in the student's area of study that has some of the following basic features that are fairly easy to spot. Is the facility roughly up to date? Or does it look as if it was built in 1950 and changed little since? Is the lab relatively spacious, so that it can accommodate the needs of large classes, or does it look as if you will be elbow to elbow with others? Do you see plenty of hoods for chemical experiments, showers, blood packs, safety equipment, and other signs that the highest standards of safety and security are being enforced? These points may seem obvious, but you can sometimes be surprised by shortcomings in college labs.

Undergraduate Research

Students should ask their tour guides or the faculty if there is a tradition of undergraduate research at the college, or better still, opportunities to work with faculty on their own research projects. Have students presented a poster conferences? Regional competitions? Published in student or professional journals? Students who are interested in research careers face important choices over these questions.

It is not easy to estimate the chances of doing publishable research just by looking at the overall size or reputation of a university, and opportunities to enter top graduate programs can depend importantly on your ability to be mentored by an active researcher or to participate in studies that are recognized and esteemed in your future profession. The next articles in this series will interrupt the college tour for a few reflections on what makes for high quality in a university. How important are accreditation? Ratings? Or is the most important factor for students going to be their peers--the people with whom they study?