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I don't know about your specific university, but you should also compare how much their tuition and fees have increased in that 20 years and before. Average rise in tuition and fees across the board in just the last 20 years has been 179%. Adjusted for inflation, the average annual tuition and fees at public universities have nearly quadrupled since 1969, from $2440 to $9349. They've also more than tripled at private universities in that same time frame, from $10,636 to $32,769. Again, that's adjusted for inflation. Has educating people really become 3 or 4 times more costly in the last 55 years, or have they realized they can charge more, make more pointless cosmetic improvements to campuses to entice students, and line the pockets their boards of trustees and presidents, some of whom make multi-million dollar salaries?
Your second paragraph is good advice though. I tell people the same thing.
In 1986, my mom paid $386 ($1,106 in 2024) in tuition for a quarter at the University of Washington. In 2015, I paid around $3,700 ($4902 in 2024) for a quarter at UW.
In 1986, UW got $440 million dollars from the state. That's $1.2 billion in 2024. In 2015, UW got $644 million from the state. That's $0.8 billion today.
It's hard to find enrollment data for some reason, but there were less than 30,000 students at UW in the late 80s. In 2015, that figure was closer to 55,000.
Using inflation adjusted figures, the state was contributing $41,000 per student in 1986 compared to $14,500 in 2015. Adding in yearly tuition, the total cost was $44,700 in 1986. In 2015, that's $29,300 per student.
Importantly, this analysis leaves out private contributions to the university's budget which makes up a large portion of its funds. However, those funds are usually restricted in how they can be spent.
Most of the buildings on UW's campus were built in the 50s or 60s. There were some that were from the 20s and 30s or older. Forget cosmetics, most of those need renovations just to remain usable. There were thousands of good, usable computers in the libraries that were always in use. Keeping that fleet running is an expense that just wasn't around 30+ years ago. Labs equipment has gotten better and more expensive. I used a $100,000 high speed camera when I was in school. My mom sure didn't have access to that.
Based on my quick, back of the envelope math, education has not gotten 3 to 4 times more expensive, but the state has been contributing less and less money to fund it.
And yet UW president is pulling in over 1.1 million a year. And I doubt she's the only overpaid one in the university administration.
According to the state salary database, there are about 3 dozen UW employees who make more than $500,000 a year in 2022 (the most recent year published). A few are administrative staff, many are coaches for sports (which is very dumb), and a few are professors.
Their total salaries sum to $32 million, which is a lot. But when you divide that across the total number of students, it comes out to about $580 per student per year. So even if you stopped paying these people, tuition would only go down about 5%.
That's assuming that these staff members don't bring any value, which is not a good assumption. Many of these highly paid people would be highly compensated in this private sector--for example the manager of UW's investments makes $1 million per year--so rightly or wrongly, the university must pay very high to retain them.
As I said before, the university has received $400 million less from the state (adjusted for inflation) today than it did in the 1980s. The expense of highly paid staff is a drop in the bucket compared to the drop in state funding.