At the Columbia Missourian, we’ve reported numerous times in the past few months on the rising cost of college education. The causes of the price hike that has pervaded the better part of this decade are numerous, but that’s not the point today.
Yesterday I talked with MU mathematics professor Stephen Montgomery-Smith about some MU faculty members who had drafted a petition in order to call a special faculty meeting next week. We were discussing the relationship between the university’s administration and its faculty when he said that he thought the university hadn’t been making the best use of the funds it was given, which I quoted him saying in the article.
He didn’t blame just the university; Montgomery-Smith also said that state underfunding was at fault. But his worries may not be unfounded, according to a report released earlier this week by the Delta Cost Project, a Washington, D.C., non-profit group.
USA Today published an article about the report on Wednesday, quoting report author Jane Wellem, who said that “states and institutions are spending money in areas that may not be in line with the public priority of preparing more graduates.” The article says the report is based on 18 years of data from the Department of Education and takes figures from over 2,000 institutions that represent 90 percent of American post-secondary students.
Broadly speaking, the study indicates that both public and private institutions over the last decade have spent less money on direct student instruction than from 1987-1996.
The USA Today piece cites a 2007 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that says the United States spends more per student than any other industrialized nation yet ranks at the bottom in degree completion. Just over half of student — 54 percent — go on to receive their degrees.
As the MU faculty prepare to meet next week to discuss the university’s fiscal future, it seems apparent that tough financial times in the economy will provide further strain to the already suffering outlook of higher education both in Missouri and nationwide.
