By: A. Parent

A. Parent — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:40:23 +0000

One of the comments at http://www.motherjones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2009/01/fiscal-therapy.html
suggests colleges are really charging what the market will bear:
"(1) The cost of attending college in 18 years for little Johnnie who was born on New Year's Day (based on an annual inflation rate of 8%) will be $63,500. That is for the first year only. (2) The annual increases in tuition/housing/etc that colleges claim is necessary is pure bunk. Every financial statement I've examined as a CPA shows surplus year after year by colleges. Case in point: Drew University in NJ had an excess of $4.6 million dollars for FY 6/2006. For fiscal year 2007, they raised tuition/housing/books 5%. The University of Delaware had a surplus of $6.3 million in 2005. For fiscal year 2006, they raised tuition/housing/books 5%. Why?
This is in addition to the collective trillions in endowment funds (and other tax exempt "slush" funds such as the ridiculous food plans where students end up having pizza parties for their entire dorm because the "purchase points" expire in less than 3 months).
Rutgers University - with 84 board members (we have no idea what they do or what their perks are) - has $2 billion in excess funds - $1 billion which is not in fixed assets.
(3) The gross and disgusting behavior of our supposed representative in education who allowed the loan companies to keep their illegal loan "fees" from colleges with nothing more than a slap on the hand. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars that could have gone to help students.
And last but not least (4) the menage a trois between the colleges, the loan industry - especially the private loans which are set up so that they are NEVER paid off - and the system we call capitalism. Which should probably be renamed "Held Captive".

Comments on: Values over dollars

By: A. Parent