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Schools

Short-Shrifting Undergrads at Research U

Do you really want your child taught by (a) a grad student who (b) may not even speak English well, and (c) whose real interest is in research rather than teaching—at which (d) he probably has little experience?

In the , we explored the difficulty of obtaining good information from colleges. This week, we continue to explore some of the worthless information colleges use to promote themselves.

Research Dollars

Many universities pride themselves on the hundreds of millions of dollars they win in research grants (usually federal and corporate). In most cases, these research grants are used to conduct technological and medical research. Most of the research is conducted through the graduate schools, so you may be wondering why you should care about research grants.

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The benefit of research grants is that the money is used to buy very expensive equipment, which is often available to upperclassmen. Usually, the colleges with the best-equipped labs also have extensive graduate research projects, which in turn are funded by multi-million dollar grants.

But this upside is balanced by a downside. Universities like research money because, in part, they can attract eminent professors; these professors do not teach (they “research”). In turn, these research programs enroll and employ large numbers of graduate students; it’s these students who teach. Therefore, large research universities tend to have a high number of professors who do not teach and a high number of graduate students who do teach. To compound the problem, morethan half of all graduate students in hard-science and engineering programs are international students; it’s common to have a chemistry teacher who doesn’t speak much English, has little (or no) experience teaching, and is far more interested in his research than in grading 400 chemistry exams.

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In the final analysis, the amount of research funding a college has may be beneficial to undergraduates in a few cases, but it’s more likely to be detrimental to your undergraduate education. The bottom line: the more research money a university has, the poorer its undergraduate teaching in research-supported subjects will likely be.

Shiny New Buildings

Some colleges, such as Emory, are loaded with shiny new buildings. Some are necessary, such as dorms and classrooms. Some are extravagant (such as a $40 million lacrosse field house designed to resemble I.M. Pei’s Louvre glass pyramid). Colleges love to show off their shiny new buildings in press releases, on their web sites, in their view books, and on campus tours. Your campus tour will take you past every shiny new building on the campus (along with the oldest building—all the buildings erected in the 1960s and ‘70s will be skipped).

Often, when a college creates a plan to enroll more and/or better students, the first thing they do is sink some money into a prominently placed shiny new building or two. Colleges consistently assume that students will be attracted to a shiny new building like a moth to a porch light.

However, how these shiny new buildings are paid for is a dirty little secret. Wealthy colleges with large endowments and annual alumni contributions have no problem paying for the new $40 million gym, but the vast majority of colleges do not have easy access to millions of dollars. Often, they raise the necessary capital by selling bonds. This may not seem bad, but these bonds are rated the same way all corporate bonds are rated: by measuring cash flow. In order to maintain a good rating, colleges must keep revenue high by increasing enrollment and keeping expenses low. Two of the primary means by which expenses are kept low is managing teacher salaries and employing fewer full-time teachers. In fact, bond ratings are often lowered if teacher salaries increase or if more teachers are hired or given promotions. So a few shiny new buildings may translate into a concerted effort by the college administration to employ less expensive teachers—mostly adjuncts and grad students.

As an example, the University of Virginia had the rating on its $220 million in outstanding bonds upgraded because of increased revenue. The rating on Clark University’s $30 million in bonds was upgraded because of increased revenue and solid profits of 3 percent. (By the way, in the nonprofit world “profits” are referred to as “surpluses.”) Eastern Michigan’s $103 million in bonds were upgraded because of increased revenue and profit margins ranging from 2 percent to nearly 5 percent.

A college increases revenue by increasing enrollment (accomplished by good marketing) and increases its profits by lowering its variable expenses (teacher salaries, clubs and organizations, special projects, and so forth). One of my favorites is an upgrade on $38-million bonds from Southwest Texas State; the bonds were upgraded, in part, because Texas State can now charge an “unlimited student fee” to pay for the bonds should the university be unable to otherwise pay them. Can you imagine the student reaction if Texas State actually attempted to impose that “unlimited student fee?” Students would quickly realize that those shiny new buildings often carry a huge price tag.

There’s no way for a typical college applicant to know all the details of a college’s new buildings, but shiny new buildings shouldn’t impress you. While college A may have constructed several new buildings, college B may have opted for keeping the same old buildings but hiring more professors. Which one matters more for your education?

Obviously, you would prefer to have better professors than a gym with a retractable roof. If you wanted to join a gym, you could have spent $500 per year by joining an area gym instead of $45,000 per year on tuition. If your college doesn’t have a great gym, you can always join the local town’s gym. However, if your college doesn’t have great professors, what are you going to do? In many cases, colleges erect buildings so they can publish pictures of them in their view books and impress students on campus tours. Don’t be impressed.

Special Speakers

The view book will list them, the web site will have pictures, and the campus tour guide will speak of them: famous people who walked across campus just last week. The list might include Tom Brokaw, Maya Angelou, and the former President of Botswana. It all seems so amazing until you realize that anyone willing to spend $50,000 can get any number of former Prime Ministers to come to your house and make breakfast for you.

A few colleges, such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, can often get famous people on campus for nothing. But most colleges are required to pay an enormous speaking fee, and in many cases, the speaking fee (for a 30-50 minute speech) is more than most professors’ annual salaries. When a college wants to enroll more students, the second thing it does (after erecting shiny new buildings) is hire a few famous people to come to campus. These famous people add credibility and prestige to the college. (The cost of someone famous? Colin Powell was paid $200,000 to speak at a Tufts lecture series. I guess it takes a lot to get a general to travel to Medford, Massachusetts.)

The problem is: In most cases, the famous speakers that colleges bring to campus are nothing more than very expensive publicity stunts. If you wonder where all your $45,000 in annual tuition goes—especially when your freshman writing professor makes $14,000 per year—this is one of the answers. And yet having a speaker on campus is no more interesting than watching him or her on television (and you probably will get a better view by watching on television).

Sometimes it’s hard not to be impressed by the list of special speakers, but remember that anyone with the money can hire a famous person to speak—and if you want to watch famous people speak, watch PBS or C-SPAN.

A Great Football Team

Colleges spend (and lose) millions of dollars on big-name football and basketball programs. Why? Because they believe that a top-ranked football team will attract more students. Many professors do not like having top-ranked teams at their college because they feel it develops an atmosphere disrespectful to intellectual inquiry. Perhaps so. But the bottom line is: colleges know that many students consider and apply to their school because of a nationally recognized sports team (usually football or basketball). While prominent sports programs can significantly add to the campus environment, the success of a college’s sports teams should never be a deciding factor – unless you’re being recruited.

View Books & Websites

College view books and websites are developed by consultants, produced by marketing teams, and judged by their effectiveness just as is any sales tool used by any business – generating prospects. However, college marketing is unregulated. View books and web sites often promote the useless (special speakers, a winning football team) and hide the useful (quality of the teachers, actual student-to-professor ratio, actual class size, crime statistics).

If a view book or web site publishes facts, use them with caution. Otherwise, ignore the view book and web site. To understand a college, you need to visit the campus. Yes, there are nice pictures of the campus in the view book, but those pictures are usually staged and airbrushed by professionals (even at most of the top colleges), often at the cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

This is the third in a three-part series.

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