U.S. college costs more detailed than at first glance
Chris Kaergard
This column appeared in the first edition of the University of Ljubljana newsmagazine Klin during the 2003-2004 school year. Klin is published approximately 6 times each year.
Several years back I saw a cartoon with the caption “Parental ghost stories.” The parents were hiding in a darkened room, and one finally out-scared the other by saying, “The average cost of a four-year, private college for our daughter will be $100,000!”
That number, sad to say, is an accurate one. But as is usually the case, the startling statistic that makes an excellent sound-byte usually masks a great deal of nuance and truth.
Does Bradley University – or any private school, for that matter – cost what seems to be an atrocious amount of money for a year’s tuition? Yes. About USD $23,000 to pay tuition, room and board, according to our financial aid office. Except that number is misleading. Nobody pays that much to go to school here – at least not right away.
As at many private universities, financial aid is available, both aid that is free, and loans that have to be paid back. Nearly 87 percent of Bradley students receive some type of financial aid, according to Director of Financial Assistance David Pardieck. The average aid package they receive, he said, is just over $13,000. In other words, it reduces the cost of a private university education down to the level of a public university education.
Well, again, not quite.
Pardieck’s numbers include federal loans – which can be subsidized or unsubsidized (meaning, if subsidized, the interest does not accrue during your time studying) depending on your level of economic need. If we assume that you’ll be applying for the loan no matter where you go, private or public, then you’re looking at the difference between $14,000 to pay at Bradley University or $10,000 at the University of Illinois. The cost difference is about what a student can make during their vacations with a well-paying job.
Bradley’s perspective on the matter of the difference?
“Folks often misinterpret that private/independent tuition is higher. The cost of generating a credit hour is higher in a private school,” Dave Pardieck. “Public schools are cheaper because of the public subsidy.”
True. Everybody does pay taxes to the state, part of which go to fund the state-subsidized schools.
Loans, though, are the most universal aspect of the process for students in the U.S. It’s our educational system’s way of making sure that everyone can go to college. But at the same time, it places a responsibility on the individual who is going to college. It’s an incentive to them to do well, graduate, and get the kind of job where they can pay back those loans easily.
That, in a nutshell, is the purest aim of structuring our educational system and its payments the way we do.
Does a typical student think of it in this way? Probably not.
The population at Bradley is overwhelmingly upper-middle class or upper class. If you were to pick out a typical student from any one of our classes, you would find that their parents are paying for their education, and that the cost is being offset just enough by our federal government, state government and the university to make it feasible. Almost 20 percent of students get need-based grants from the federal government. Almost 33 percent get grants from the state government – though these are typically smaller – and almost 80 percent get aid grants from the university. These numbers overlap, so that the neediest students get grant money from all sources before they have to make up the remainder of the cost by taking out loans.
Put another way, if you put together all the money that Bradley students pay in tuition and fees each year, it would add up to $80 million. Of that, more than half is paid by state, federal and university grants – with the university paying $31.3 million dollars out of its grant and scholarship fund every year.
Who gets what out of the grant fund is determined by what students and parents can pay. That’s determined when university officials look at the federal form everybody applying for financial aid at any university has to file every March.
“We look at the income. We look at a small portion of investment and savings, we’re sensitive to the size of the family, the age of the parents, and the amount of tax a family pays,” Pardieck said, adding that the number of children a family has attending college also plays a role. “What makes ‘The System’ work, what makes the playing field level, is that the calculation is applied universally.”
Again, not exactly.
That money is made available primarily because of donations to the university from alumni and families of alumni who remember their time here fondly and want others to do the same. Naturally, this places some stress on the university to continue that cycle, and to continue to produce alumni who are able to have the discretionary income to give money to their alma mater. The better the reputation of the school, the richer the alumni – and, in some cases, the longer its been around – the more money they’re likely to have to give away to students.
Getting back to the numbers, though, if $40 million is accounted for through grants, where does the rest come from?
Nearly $26 million comes from federal loans, which, as I’ve said, have to be paid back, but are the responsibility of the student. This means that only about $13 million has to be paid by students and their families every year. It’s a meaningless number, but if (and I stress that it’s not true) things were egalitarian, that would be a mere $2,600 per student – positively reasonable in comparison to the average American income.
Of course, that’s not the way it works. Private universities stay competitive by attracting the best students, and they often pay for the privilege of getting them. In doing so, they try to enhance at their own reputation as a school by getting an especially bright student who could make it to the top of their field and (funny how it all comes back to dollars…) earn lots of money to donate back to the university. Private universities, as Associate Provost for Student Affairs Alan Galsky reminded me, really are businesses, first and foremost.
From an historical perspective, I suppose this system is at least an improvement. University educations used to be rare, no matter the location. Private university educations used to be reserved only for the elite. In some ways, there’s still that stereotype, but increasingly the doors are opening to anybody who is both willing and able to meet the challenge. The business is making some allowances and showing itself willing to spend some money just to get a broader customer base.
Sometimes this means working long hours outside of class to make the money to help keep up on payments to the university. Sometimes it means resigning yourself to shouldering student loans for 10 or 15 years after graduation. In the end, it’s a choice that people make because they want to go to a private school.
A degree from a university is really all that’s needed to achieve gainful employment in today’s American culture, and many public institutions are not only considered respectable, they’re considered top-of-the-line. People choose private universities instead because they are attracted to a specific program that they feel (or that rankings and popular opinion show) is better, or because of other intangibles.
I was willing to pay – or, being one of the lucky ones, to have my parents pay – to be at a private school because it felt the most at home. I liked the small, enclosed atmosphere. I liked knowing that, unlike at a public school, my introductory classes would be conducted in a classroom of 30, not a lecture hall of 300. I like knowing that no matter how much our head of student affairs and I may differ over something, I can still poke my head into his office and say hello.
Those are the intangibles that make it worth it for me to go to Bradley University, and those answers are different for everyone.
Does that make it a good system, or the right system? By no stretch of the imagination. It’s merely the one we have. In principle, everybody wants people to have access to the best, most individualized education they can receive. For private education to have opened up as much as it has over the last 40 years is phenomenal. To achieve the kind of attitudinal shift that would be needed for America to believe this kind of education should be open to everybody in a state-supported fashion would be incredible. That day may come, long off though it may be. Until then, I’m satisfied with the progress that we do have.
Chris Kaergard is a fourth-year history major from St. Charles, Illinoist. He is the editor of the Bradley Scout. We are amazed that he managed to pay for college without losing his much-needed typing arm. Direct questions, comments, or other responses to ckaergar@bradley.edu.