Jessica Blackstock
Staff Writer
I must admit that figuring out this week’s topic was a bit of a struggle. Having just gotten back from Spring Break, I was having a hard time finding something of substance to discuss. But just in the nick of time I found my topic. It was as if the clouds opened up and a light shone down into the mail room as my friend opened his mailbox last week and said, “7.47 percent? Are you joking? Good thing we are graduating next month.” My other friend looked at me and said, “Well it looks like you found your topic.”
You got to love Pepperdine’s wonderful timing. Just as students return bronzed, relaxed and broke from their Spring Break they are greeted by a letter telling them that their tuition has been raised 7.47 percent to help face the “continuing economic pressures” of providing higher education.
We all know that Pepperdine is expensive. I don’t think anyone here is unaware of that fact. What is interesting and something people often glaze over is the continuing rise in tuition year after year. National inflation as reported in January 2005 was at 2.97 percent — well below Pepperdine’s own inflation rate. While I also understand that private education is not cheap and running a university is no small task, this large increase now puts the total cost of a year of Pepperdine at around $40,000.
Most people in America will agree that a college education is important and helps provide for greater opportunities. Most people will also agree that people with a college education are more successful, unless of course your name is Bill Gates. However, the debate that often arises is really how much better a $30,770-a-year college education (the cost of my tuition) is than, oh let’s just say, a $10,563-a-year college education (the cost of my brother’s tuition at Oklahoma State University). We are both having great experiences but at very different price tags. This debate often raises the question, “Is it really worth it?”
Since colleges are in the business of educating, I decided it was time to educate myself in what tuition was looking like around the country. Ratings are important to any college and something we hear a lot about at Pepperdine. Yes, I understand that you can’t solely judge a university by its ranking but it is undeniably a good guide for comparing schools. At Pepperdine “Top 50” is a phrase I am very familiar with — my class entered Pepperdine the year US News and World Report had deemed it in the “Top 50”. Since then, Pepperdine has slipped and is currently ranked No. 53.
I decided to compare tuitions to other schools that ranked above us to see if a higher ranking means a higher price tag. I looked at Harvard (1), Yale (2), Princeton (3), Dartmouth (10), Johns Hopkins (15), Emory (20), Georgetown (25), USC (30), Case Western Reserve University (35), University of Rochester (40), UCSB (45), Penn State University (50), University of Florida (51) and George Washington University (52). Through my random sampling I was at least comforted in the fact that, outside of the three state universities, most of the school’s tuition fees were comparable to Pepperdine. However, Pepperdine’s tuition is more than the sum of the three state schools that are all ranked higher than Pepperdine added together (even for an out-of-state student).
Of the schools I sampled, Harvard, which is ranked No. 1, had the lowest private school tuition at $27,448. Princeton’s tuition is $29,910 and Yale’s is $29,820, however, both of these schools have introduced extensive financial reform programs over the past five to seven years that has increased grant money to their students and thus reduced the cost of their tuition. Most of the schools I looked at ranged somewhere between $28,000 and $31,000 a year for tuition; our neighbor to the south, University of Southern California, costs $30,512 a year. What was most interesting about this study was the inverse relationship between the ranking of Pepperdine and its tuition costs. As tuition has gone up, our ranking has gone down. This is particularly surprising since, in his letter to students, Seaver Dean David Baird wrote “These increases will enable the University to continue to provide the highest quality education and services and to enhance academic programs and add new student facilities.”
Next year Pepperdine will cost $955 per unit. To put that in perspective, that means a 4-unit class will cost $3,820 that will meet about 56 hours for the semester which means each hour you are in class costs you about $68 or, if you really want to get your head spinning, $1.13 a minute. So whether that makes you think twice about skipping class, it should make you think about your answer to the question “Is it worth it?”
Hopefully, your answer is that it is worth it; if it’s not, decide what you can do to change that. Yes, I realize that that last sentence just sounded like a bad motivational moment straight out of Wednesday morning Convocation, but honestly, the cost of higher education isn’t going to get any cheaper. So vocalize your concerns, challenge the status quo and maximize the programs and resources available to make your $160,000 education really worth its price tag.
03-17-2005
