A graduation cap with a tassel that extends up like a line graph.
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Pres. Joe Biden’s college loan forgiveness plan earlier this summer, I agreed with them. I have 12 reasons for believing that this was a horrible idea.
But the main one I want to explore today is a concern about Biden’s plan that even loan forgiveness supporters have to share: It didn’t do anything to address the underlying problem.
It’s true that the cost of college has grown well beyond general inflation over the past couple of decades. In an effort to understand why, the Wall Street Journal last week published an extensive report diving into what’s driving the increases. The Journal looked at the budgets of 50 flagship public universities over the past two decades. They found that tuition and other costs rose by 64% over that period compared to 50% for another big ticket item, a new house.
The report suggests three factors that are driving the increase: exploding administrative staffs, a building boom and subsidies to athletic programs. Especially noteworthy was the finding that even as state governments slashed their support for their flagship universities, the schools continued to increase spending. They more than made up for the cuts with increases in tuition. For every one dollar in state support that was lost, these schools, on average, increased tuition and fees by $2.40.
But that apparently did not happen at UW-Madison, where tuition was frozen for about a decade. The UW was not one of the six schools that the Journal highlighted in its story, but it probably was part of the database of 50 schools that fed into the report’s median numbers.
All of which is to say that the Journal report is a good start, but not nearly enough and it’s not clear how relevant it is to my alma mater. We really need a comprehensive deep dive into this at both the national and the state levels. It would be good if Biden would put together a task force to study the costs of college or maybe Congress could have the Congressional Budget Office do it.
Locally, it would be appropriate for the Legislature to assign the respected and nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau to study what’s going on at the UW. I would have four questions for starters:
What is the ratio of instructional and research staff to other administrators and how has that changed over the last couple of decades?
What is the cost of the UW’s building program over that period and how much of it was borne by students as opposed to private donors and state taxpayers? And, how much has upkeep and maintenance increased over that time? It’s one thing for a donor to pay for a building, but then that building needs to be heated, cooled and maintained for the rest of its life, costs that are almost never taken into account when the ribbon is cut and the donor is lauded.
Is the athletic department subsidized by the UW’s general fund? At most schools athletics are subsidized, but at a handful of places it works the other way and athletics cover their costs and even sometimes contribute money back to the school. The UW claims to be one of those rare cases, but I’m skeptical. The athletic department releases budget data, like coach’s salaries and bonuses, usually only after reporters file open records requests. That resistance to sharing information is concerning. So, an independent audit of the claim that they cover their costs and then some would be a worthwhile endeavor.
How carefully does the UW control its budget? The Journal found that many schools have budget practices that leave a lot to be desired. Governing board members are given scant information and discouraged from digging deeper. Line items are defined inconsistently from year to year. It’s hard to compare one school to another because there are no industry-wide accounting standards. Establishing those would be one thing Biden could do on his own without pushback from anyone.
I don’t think that paying off college debt is the answer for a lot of reasons, but whether or not you agree, one question that we all should have is this: Even if we were to pay off everybody’s debt now, what happens next year when a whole new crop of graduates makes the same demand?
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. Both his reporting and his opinion writing have been recognized by the Milwaukee Press Club. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
