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Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

cnbc.com

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Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#11

Post by wyldfire »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #6
bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

You still have to pay market rate for professors, executives, maintenance, etc, if you want to stay relevant. You can't just decide to reduce your income and expect nothing else to change. They're changing where their getting the income from, probably with the idea that former students of Brown who are now doing very well, will be willing to pay it forward to a new student who is in a similar position as they used to…

The administrative costs have been the most sizable portion of cost increases for universities over the last few decades. The costs for teaching faculty have decreased, probably due to the use of adjunct professors (who don't get tenure nor benefits).

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#12

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

Retric wrote: post #9
bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

If your pulling in ~10,000$ per person in tuition, and the average person takes 5 classes with a class size of 30 that's. 60,000$ per professor per year if they teach 4 classes, 75,000$ per professor if they teach 5 and 90k & 6 classes before expenses per class. So, the only way for that to work out is some other subsidies. However, lectures allow you to use TA's to more cheaply expand class sizes and might make it p…

But Brown's tuition for out of state students is just under $50,000 per year per student.

Does that mean they could be paying those professors $300,000?

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#13

Post by bmcusick »

Retric wrote: post #9
bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

If your pulling in ~10,000$ per person in tuition, and the average person takes 5 classes with a class size of 30 that's. 60,000$ per professor per year if they teach 4 classes, 75,000$ per professor if they teach 5 and 90k & 6 classes before expenses per class. So, the only way for that to work out is some other subsidies. However, lectures allow you to use TA's to more cheaply expand class sizes and might make it p…

Why even use TAs for lectures? There's YouTube. There's automated software for quizzes and testing. Textbooks should be open source documentation, printed-on-demand.

I'm not saying remove the human element entirely, but there's a lot of low hanging fruit in education to consider where technological automation can help improve the productivity of educators.

Check out how Georgia Institute of Technology is offering a real CS Master's Degree for a fraction of the cost using similar stuff: https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#14

Post by lefrancaiz »

Retric wrote: post #9
bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

If your pulling in ~10,000$ per person in tuition, and the average person takes 5 classes with a class size of 30 that's. 60,000$ per professor per year if they teach 4 classes, 75,000$ per professor if they teach 5 and 90k & 6 classes before expenses per class. So, the only way for that to work out is some other subsidies. However, lectures allow you to use TA's to more cheaply expand class sizes and might make it p…

You can have a professor teach more than one class too. Then your math changes significantly.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#15

Post by timthelion »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #12
Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your pulling in ~10,000$ per person in tuition, and the average person takes 5 classes with a class size of 30 that's. 60,000$ per professor per year if they teach 4 classes, 75,000$ per professor if they teach 5 and 90k & 6 classes before expenses per class. So, the only way for that to work out is some other subsidies. However, lectures allow you to use TA's to more cheaply expand class sizes and might make it p…

But Brown's tuition for out of state students is just under $50,000 per year per student. Does that mean they could be paying those professors $300,000?

Aren't there other expenses like maintaining the campus and paying for journal subscriptions and research equipment?

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#16

Post by dalbasal »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #6
bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

You still have to pay market rate for professors, executives, maintenance, etc, if you want to stay relevant. You can't just decide to reduce your income and expect nothing else to change. They're changing where their getting the income from, probably with the idea that former students of Brown who are now doing very well, will be willing to pay it forward to a new student who is in a similar position as they used to…

The exploding cost of education over the last generation doesn't boil down to an increase in teaching or even research staff costs. These costs are stable, largely thanks to the very low cost of junior academics.

In the US, "administration staff" (everyone else) has blown up by 500% or more, proportionally. There have also been increases in non staff related costs. University' are fancier, more expensive and more income focused.

What the OP is saying is that education has become unaffordable because it has become expensive, not because of how it is financed. Fixing Brown students problem with donor financing is great for Brown students, but does not scale even if is sustainable at brown.

Whether through donors, loans, public financing or parental savings, we cannot afford to give everyone a $150k education. Any solution that builds on the premise that we can is an elitist (or at least elite) model.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#17

Post by Improvotter »

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

I recently met an American here in Europe that mostly grew up here the last few years who wanted to go to NA (more specifically Toronto) for university when she could basically enrol here in a good university for a fraction of the cost. I pay less than a gran every year for my software engineering master's degree and can't fathom someone going to a different country knowing you're gonna be in debt for a large portion of your life. I'd rather study here and move to Canada after than study there and get a huge ass debt piled up.

I really don't get how these universities manage their cashflow. With such an exorbitant amount of cash you can basically put people on Mars for all I know.

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#18

Post by marcopolitik »

bmcusick wrote: post #2

Not that loan-free educations are bad, but why is Brown raising $120M from alumni and the like, rather than lowering their tuition by $120M? The student loan crisis is only a crisis because Universities (lead by the Ivy League and similarly elite private colleges) are charging exorbitant prices for tuition, room, and board. This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people. Efforts to…

> This isn't charity or benevolent. This is just bilking a different class of people.

Voluntarily giving some cash to a school endowment is not getting "bilked".

Re: Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans

#19

Post by votepaunchy »

> "The university plans to add $4.5 million to its financial aid budget each year to cover its 6,500 undergraduates."

~$700 per student.

> "In 2016, the average Brown student graduated with a debt of $23,810, compared with $8,908 for Princeton, which adopted the no-loans policy in 2001."

The increased financial aid may not even cover the annual increases in student debt. This change only covers a fraction of Brown student loans.

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