How much educational bang do higher-education consumers get for their bucks at Connecticut colleges and universities? The answer to that question is far from black and white. For a deeper understanding and comparison of higher-education value, the consumer must factor in a matrix that includes: higher-education outcomes, sticker price (tuition, room and board, etc.) and […]
How much educational bang do higher-education consumers get for their bucks at Connecticut colleges and universities?
The answer to that question is far from black and white. For a deeper understanding and comparison of higher-education value, the consumer must factor in a matrix that includes: higher-education outcomes, sticker price (tuition, room and board, etc.) and the actual costs paid by students.
The 2019 Wall Street Journal/Times and U.S. News & World Report college rankings were released last month. In rankings such as these Yale University routinely shares top-five honors with Harvard, MIT, Princeton and others of its ilk. In both the U.S. News and WSJ rankings, the Blue Mother was ranked No. 3 for 2019.
The rankings measure deliverables such as student outcomes, class sizes, per-pupil spending and on-time graduation rates. Other metrics attempt to assess value. The U.S. News rankings include median starting salaries for freshly minted grads. The WSJ/Times rankings include both average salary 10 years after entering college, and average student debt at graduation.
Moreover, as with so many commodities, the sticker price in higher education seldom reflects what consumers actually pay. Among private schools, richer schools such as, well, Yale (with an endowment pushing $30 billion) can afford to be generous with aid. The sticker price for tuition plus room and board for Yale College is $66,900. But the average matriculating 18-year-old pays just $18,053, according to the WSJ/Times calculus — a whopping $48,847 differential.
Wesleyan has an even higher sticker price (tuition plus room and board = $66,970), but with its billion-dollar-plus endowment can afford to be, if not quite as generous as Yale, still pretty generous. The net annual price tag to attend college in Middletown is $24,251, according to WSJ/Times — a spread of $42,719.
Other less well-endowed private colleges (which includes most of them) can’t afford such extravagant subsidies, so the spread between the sticker price and actual cost is far smaller. Both Quinnipiac ($60,970) and Fairfield U. ($61,445) have $60,000-plus sticker prices, but the actual average annual cost to attend is closer to $40,000 ($38,665 and $37,799 annually, respectively).
The calculus for four-year public universities is far different. Connecticut high-school grads pay roughly half the tuition of their out-of-state counterparts to attend UConn, Southern Connecticut State University and the others.
A decade ago UConn decided to offer “Presidential” scholarships to every valedictorian and at every high school in Connecticut.
And it worked: Over a decade, the number of valedictorians and salutatorian has doubled — from 87 to 176 this academic year.
