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Another Highlight

Getting Out the Student Vote


The National Campus Voter Registration Project aims to turn out college students in record numbers on Election Day. For more information, read the news release or go directly to the Your Vote Your Voice website. 



Together We Can


Click here to view Together We Can, NAICU's policy "quick-take," which was sent to all 2008 presidential candidates, along with this accompanying letter.

Private Colleges Fight Sticker Shock


Replacing loans with grants, cutting tuition, guaranteeing no price increases, and more. Responding to consumer needs, private colleges are redoubling efforts to stay affordable and accessible. Download our compendium of innovative efforts (last updated June 12) to see examples of these initiatives. See our news release for NAICU's perspective on this accelerating national trend.

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NAICU's University & College Accountability Network

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News items, features, and opinion pieces posted on this site from sources outside NAICU do not necessarily reflect the position of the association and its members.  Rather, this content reflects the diversity of issues and opinions that are shaping American higher education.

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College Is a Steal

Marketplace (American Public Media)


January 30, 2007


By Jake Schrum
President
Southwestern University - www.southwestern.edu

(For more information, contact: Ellen Davis, director of communications, 512-863-1570, davise@southwestern.edu.)

Try to put your 17-year-old up in an Embassy Suites or any other moderately-priced hotel for 240 nights a year, the length of an average year in college. You'd pay about $24,000 for the year, and all you'd get is a room, linen and maid service, and maybe a free continental breakfast.

What else would your son or daughter get for the hard-earned $24,000 you spent on a 240-day hotel stay? In a word, nothing. No professors to teach them. No science labs or libraries. No music instructors. No technology centers. No tutoring or other help when they can't figure out calculus, write a coherent sentence, or parse a differential equation. No help with finding a job or career placement and training. No coaches or lush green recreational fields. But that's what a one-year package of tuition room and board costs at a good university.

If you had to actually buy all those things on top of renting your Embassy Suites room, you'd begin to appreciate it. It's a deal even at a top private university that can cost as much as $45,000 a year.

Then consider what students, families, politicians demand of colleges and universities. They insist that senior professors teach undergraduates and get upset when lower-paid graduate students stand in. They want classes to be small. And they want campuses to have state-of-the-art facilities and technologies. In other words, they desire — and insist on — the very things that make a college education more expensive.

At the same time, they complain bitterly that college costs too much. But that investment buys students an education that will earn them at least a million dollars more during their lifetimes than their friends who didn't go to college.

Now, think about that..


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