Dive Summary:
- Research presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities challenges the commonly accepted belief that the country's most expensive private institutions provide a higher-quality education by spending more per student.
- Using national data sets, the researchers from Wabash College found only a minimal relationship between the amount spent by a college on education and the quality of education its students received.
- Additionally, the research suggested that colleges spending a fraction of what their more prestigious counterparts do--and operating with more adjunct faculty and higher student-faculty ratios--have almost equal educational success, suggesting that students at a regional public university might be getting 90% of the education they'd receive at an elite private school for 20% of the cost.
From the article:
Everyone knows there's a reason the most expensive colleges in the country -- generally private residential institutions -- charge so much. The money they spend on hiring the best faculty members (full-timers of course) and on keeping student-faculty ratios low results in a higher-quality education. Right? The crowd gathered here for a standing-room-only session at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities certainly wanted to believe. ...