60% of Americans think colleges are only in it for the money

A nationwide poll released yesterday found that 60 percent of Americans think colleges are more interested in making money than educating their students and only 32 percent still think colleges are primarily interested in education.

The number of Americans who think colleges are just looking to make a fast buck increased from 52 percent in just three years. The survey was taken by Public Agenda and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

You can read about it in the New York Times or the Chronicle of Higher Education or you can read the full report here.

One of the prime messages of my book is that college administrators have long since abandoned their mission to educate students and replaced it with retention of students as a way to improve their bottom lines. It looks like more and more Americans are figuring that out.

Why is that?  Start with tuition increases at two or three times the inflation rate, then add the fact that only 21 percent of revenues are spent on instruction, then add on the fact that colleges take kickbacks from predatory lenders and sell the names and addresses of their students to credit card companies. What do you get? Mistrust.

Then add the fact that colleges are wasting millions on things like state of the art dining commons, luxury condominiums, multi-million dollar student centers and other frills to attract party school students who don't care about education. Then add the fact that administrative salaries have been climbing at an alarming rate.

But that's not the end of it. It takes the average student six years to graduate from a four-year college adding 50 percent to the sticker price. And when they get out of college their dumbed-down educations don't produce the jobs students were promised. What they get instead is a lifetime of debt paying off $22,000 in student loans and $3,000 in credit card debt. Such a deal!

Unless colleges get their act together and focus more on education and stop ripping off their students, you can expect that 60 percent number to rise. You can only rip off millions of students for so long before the public starts to catch on, which they seem to be doing.

Comments

[credit card for students]

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