Money, I guess if I had enough I would attend one of the Ivy League schools! Can someone actually tell me where all the money goes when a school is in operation? Facilities..... Teachers/Professors..... Maintenance Personnal...... Supplies.... If I have missed anything, please continue the list...... Thanks, Jim
You have covered it pretty well. Your top three answers make up a large portion of the costs. Having owned and operated three small businesses in my life, I find that many people don't realize how much it costs to manage a facility, cover a payroll and provide benefits and insurance. Pensions for retired tenured professors might be fairly significant as well. Liability insurance for such an operation must be huge, too. At some of the purely online, expensive schools, there must be huge profit because the overhead is much lower.
Well, at the schools around here it's all wasted on sports teams, events, bureaucracy, and extremely old, valuable, high maintenance buildings.
I would add sports in the mix as well. Large Universities must dump a huge amount into unpopular sports that produce no income. Having a water polo team that fly’s and drives all over the country could not be cheap. Just think of all the other sports they have, dozens and dozens of them. I know there is a constant debate about my local CC’s football and baseball team.
I agree. They spend tons of money on sports and consider it a good investment into advertising. And that's probably a correct assumption, too.
Absolutely, that's why employee costs are so high. I'm not anti teacher union, but it does drive up costs.
University of Illinois $84,507 - $142,431 University of Pennsylvania $107,442 - $200,500 Duke University $111,910 - $176,874 University of California, San Diego (UCSD) $71,216 - $137,555 University of Georgia $93,000 - $134,653 Extremely tough landing a job though.
Annual reports are usually available for not-for-profit and for-profit colleges and universities (perhaps not for religious schools). For example the Harvard annual reports are here: Financial Administration - Annual Financial Report of Harvard University Not so long ago I looked at the Apollo/U of Phoenix report which is available on line. I do not know if public universities reports are freely available. These annual reports will tell you where the money goes. In fact it is probably a good idea to review these reports before selecting a school for long term study.
