The United States’ best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported.
Over the past two decades, they built fancy academic buildings and dorms, poured money into big-time sports programs, hired layers of administrators, and passed the bill along to students, reported the WSJ Aug. 10.
“The spending is inextricably tied to the nation’s 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars federal student debt crisis,” said the report. “Colleges have paid for their sprees in part by raising tuition prices, leaving many students with few options but to take on more debt. That means student loans served as easy financing for university projects.”
It has long been clear to American families that the cost of college has gone up, even at public schools designed to be affordable for state residents. At the median flagship university, spending rose 38 percent between 2002 and 2022, according to the report.
“The schools paid for it in part by pulling in tuition dollars,” the report added. The median flagship received more than double the revenue from undergraduate and graduate tuition and fees it did 20 years prior. Even accounting for enrollment gains, that amounted to a 64 percent price increase for the average student, far outpacing the growth in most big household expenses.
