The leading research universities, like my own University of California (UC), are having a difficult time with finances. The standard complaint from our administrators is that the governments, state and federal, are not providing enough money and that is why, regrettably, they have to raise student fees so much.
I want to take a different look at the simple question: What do we spend on undergraduate education and what do we spend on other missions? We have become used to answering that question in a misleading way, by relying on an old accounting habit. This habit allows us, effectively, to impute much of the cost of our research enterprise to the specific mission of undergraduate education, thereby giving a basis for increases in the tuition we charge our undergraduates. As part of its program of supporting higher education, the federal government should seize the opportunity to revisit these habits, and demand an honest accounting of the costs of education from the institutions it supports. Read the rest of this entry »