Cost vs price: Majors at CC (IHE article)

[polly_mer]

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/economic-terms%E2%80%A6

[marshwiggle]

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/economic-terms%E2%80%A6

One quote from the article that doesn't seem to fit my experience:

I've looked at the numbers. On my own campus, for instance, anthropology and history are profit centers. English breaks even. We lose huge amounts on automotive and nursing. And that's only counting areas with full-time faculty dedicated to them. Gender studies, for instance, doesn't have any full-time lines devoted to it; it's taught by faculty from other departments. The courses run at a decent size and pay for themselves. Meanwhile, a more vocational program like rad tech loses money.

In our university, the Faculty of Science is in good shape financially, with lots of high enrollement programs, whereas the Faculty of Arts is not doing well.

Can anyone else vouch for anthropology as a profit center? If so, how does it recruit?

[mamselle]

They show "Raiders of the Lost Ark" films at high school assemblies.

(Kidding)

M.

[marshwiggle]

They show "Raiders of the Lost Ark" films at high school assemblies.

(Kidding)

M.

Don't get me started. At open houses what do you think Medieval Studies uses? LOTR

[Parasaurolophus]

In our university, the Faculty of Science is in good shape financially, with lots of high enrollement programs, whereas the Faculty of Arts is not doing well.

Can anyone else vouch for anthropology as a profit center? If so, how does it recruit?

You're at a real university with a powerhouse faculty of science. The balance of things is different for a CC where, for one thing, there's not the same kind of grant money coming in.

My university was a community college until about ten years ago. While our sciences generally run a profit, it's a close affair. And there's very, very little grant money coming in to help. Arts courses, on the other hand (and anthropology is lumped in there, along with humanities), have very low overhead. We break even at around 20 domestic students per class, or 8 internationals. We have a lot of international students, though. My department has six faculty, and we teach pretty much exclusively first- and second-year service courses. Our classes are capped at 35, and 50%-75% are usually international students, and our waitlists for each class are 70+ students strong. So we run at a tidy profit (~$800k), because there's no special equipment or anything that needs to be funded. Just a room, instructor, projector, and whatever cut the admin takes.

Back around 2009, a bunch of post-1992 universities in the UK decided to cut their arts and humanities programs entirely, in favour of applied sciences like engineering, nursing, etc. They'd noticed that per-student government funding was a lot higher for band-D (science) courses than others, and they decided they'd make more money by maxing out their student numbers in those band-D courses.

What they didn't realize/willfully ignored was that the per-student overhead for band-D courses was a lot higher, and that the departments they were cutting (entirely!) had been running significant profits for years, whereas many of their applied science courses were running at losses. Turns out they were also cutting the only departments that were at all competitive on the Research Assessment Exercise (In the end, Middlesex's entire philosophy department was bought up by King's. Go figure.). Plus, why would anyone want to do engineering at Middlesex University when they could do it at any other of London's better universities?

[apl68]

In our university, the Faculty of Science is in good shape financially, with lots of high enrollement programs, whereas the Faculty of Arts is not doing well.

Can anyone else vouch for anthropology as a profit center? If so, how does it recruit?

You're at a real university with a powerhouse faculty of science. The balance of things is different for a CC where, for one thing, there's not the same kind of grant money coming in.

My university was a community college until about ten years ago. While our sciences generally run a profit, it's a close affair. And there's very, very little grant money coming in to help. Arts courses, on the other hand (and anthropology is lumped in there, along with humanities), have very low overhead. We break even at around 20 domestic students per class, or 8 internationals. We have a lot of international students, though. My department has six faculty, and we teach pretty much exclusively first- and second-year service courses. Our classes are capped at 35, and 50%-75% are usually international students, and our waitlists for each class are 70+ students strong. So we run at a tidy profit (~$800k), because there's no special equipment or anything that needs to be funded. Just a room, instructor, projector, and whatever cut the admin takes.

Back around 2009, a bunch of post-1992 universities in the UK decided to cut their arts and humanities programs entirely, in favour of applied sciences like engineering, nursing, etc. They'd noticed that per-student government funding was a lot higher for band-D (science) courses than others, and they decided they'd make more money by maxing out their student numbers in those band-D courses.

What they didn't realize/willfully ignored was that the per-student overhead for band-D courses was a lot higher, and that the departments they were cutting (entirely!) had been running significant profits for years, whereas many of their applied science courses were running at losses. Turns out they were also cutting the only departments that were at all competitive on the Research Assessment Exercise (In the end, Middlesex's entire philosophy department was bought up by King's. Go figure.). Plus, why would anyone want to do engineering at Middlesex University when they could do it at any other of London's better universities?

That points up something that drives liberal arts faculty crazy.  There's this public perception that their departments are huge money wasters that are draining their universities' finances, when in fact it's often they who are helping to subsidize the high-overhead STEM departments.  How would you feel if you were a productive cow being milked harder and harder, and yet constantly told that you were eating too much hay?

[Aster]

I found this article overly simplistic.

The comments section is illuminating.

Evaluating the institutional costs of particular programs is not as simple as it sounds. Not all programs have the same funding sources, same operating costs, etc...

And even if any particular college is still consistently hemorrhaging money on a particular program, then that institution is aware of it and takes steps accordingly. But sometimes those steps might not make sense to random professors who don't work in those areas, but still feel like they know enough to write their opinion on Inside Higher Ed.

[spork]

From my perspective, Matt Reed's column is an argument for unbundling the curriculum and charging differential tuition according to program. If it costs more to run courses that lead to certification in automotive repair, then charge more for those courses. If it costs less to run courses in anthropology, then charge less for those courses. But don't require everyone to take courses in automotive repair and anthropology.

[dismalist]

Absolutely!

[Durchlässigkeitsbeiwert]

One quote from the article that doesn't seem to fit my experience:

I've looked at the numbers. On my own campus, for instance, anthropology and history are profit centers. English breaks even. We lose huge amounts on automotive and nursing. And that's only counting areas with full-time faculty dedicated to them. Gender studies, for instance, doesn't have any full-time lines devoted to it; it's taught by faculty from other departments. The courses run at a decent size and pay for themselves. Meanwhile, a more vocational program like rad tech loses money.

Higher enrollment improves profitability only if it decreases cost per student. However, both listed programs require quite expensive setup to run, which normally cannot accommodate extra students without buying more.
Author's current employer even has an extra charge for these courses.
https://www.brookdalecc.edu/admissions/tuition-fees/

Certain programs may be actually cheaper to run in a large research university, where a lot of equipment is paid for by external research grants, but happens to be used by undergrads as well.

[arcturus]

From my perspective, Matt Reed's column is an argument for unbundling the curriculum and charging differential tuition according to program. If it costs more to run courses that lead to certification in automotive repair, then charge more for those courses. If it costs less to run courses in anthropology, then charge less for those courses. But don't require everyone to take courses in automotive repair and anthropology.

One of the things I like about working at a university is that there is an underlying concept that we are working together. Sure, our math department is a net revenue producer (low cost per class, lots of students enrolled) and some of our foreign language departments are net losses (low cost per class, but very few students enrolled). However, I do not think it is in the interest of the students to increase the size of the math department faculty and reduce the size of the foreign language departments since the latter provide unique opportunities for our students. Arguing that the tuition paid should be based on the costs of individual course offerings defeats the purpose of having a unified, collective, entity known as a university.

[marshwiggle]

From my perspective, Matt Reed's column is an argument for unbundling the curriculum and charging differential tuition according to program. If it costs more to run courses that lead to certification in automotive repair, then charge more for those courses. If it costs less to run courses in anthropology, then charge less for those courses. But don't require everyone to take courses in automotive repair and anthropology.

One of the things I like about working at a university is that there is an underlying concept that we are working together. Sure, our math department is a net revenue producer (low cost per class, lots of students enrolled) and some of our foreign language departments are net losses (low cost per class, but very few students enrolled). However, I do not think it is in the interest of the students to increase the size of the math department faculty and reduce the size of the foreign language departments since the latter provide unique opportunities for our students. Arguing that the tuition paid should be based on the costs of individual course offerings defeats the purpose of having a unified, collective, entity known as a university.

But at that rate, why shouldn't math have all of their classes with only a dozen students each, requiring dozens of faculty? That would be easier for everyone teaching. Why should they shoulder the extra burden of large numbers so that other courses in other departments can have the luxury of small classes?

[polly_mer]

The question is why are people taking certain courses?

For example, Super Dinky lost money on every nursing credit.  However, no one would enroll at Super Dinky as a humanities major.

Thus, while any given English course would technically be profit (i.e., direct cost << number of students in section * tuition for one course), it was penny wise and pound foolish to keep propping up the English department for a non-existent major and extra gen ed requirements to keep the faculty employed.

At the extreme situation, SD was headed towards only having (1) nursing majors because the limited number of seats in the region and (2) athletes who were looking for the easiest possible major (often psychology or sport management).  Neither of those will fill the high profit-margin English courses, even with additional gen ed requirements.

If anything, the gen ed requirements that were not transfer friendly were lowering enrollment by students seeking other majors and shopping around.

Thus, the case for gen ed subsidizing expensive majors doesn't tend to work on administrators who know the data and have run the scenarios.

[onehappyunicorn]

I am at a CC and our Art Appreciation classes alone pay for our department. Honestly they allow us to run some low enrollment studios without too much of a fuss. As a whole between Art Appreciation, Music Appreciation, and our other gen ed arts courses we provide right around 50 percent student of the enrollment for the total arts and humanities general education transfer courses at our institution.

Nursing, automotive, computer based machining, and a couple other programs are a huge cost to run for us but I think most faculty realize the benefit to the community since many of our students from those programs end up getting jobs here.

There is a separate question if workforce development that benefits private companies should be subsidized by the taxpayer and by students who can barely afford living expenses as is (we have a food pantry on our campus now which is both great and sad) but since our board and community leaders are by far comprised of local business owners I doubt there will ever be significant discussion. I am not wading into that discussion other than to note the inherent conflict of interest.

[arcturus]

From my perspective, Matt Reed's column is an argument for unbundling the curriculum and charging differential tuition according to program. If it costs more to run courses that lead to certification in automotive repair, then charge more for those courses. If it costs less to run courses in anthropology, then charge less for those courses. But don't require everyone to take courses in automotive repair and anthropology.

One of the things I like about working at a university is that there is an underlying concept that we are working together. Sure, our math department is a net revenue producer (low cost per class, lots of students enrolled) and some of our foreign language departments are net losses (low cost per class, but very few students enrolled). However, I do not think it is in the interest of the students to increase the size of the math department faculty and reduce the size of the foreign language departments since the latter provide unique opportunities for our students. Arguing that the tuition paid should be based on the costs of individual course offerings defeats the purpose of having a unified, collective, entity known as a university.

But at that rate, why shouldn't math have all of their classes with only a dozen students each, requiring dozens of faculty? That would be easier for everyone teaching. Why should they shoulder the extra burden of large numbers so that other courses in other departments can have the luxury of small classes?

In any common enterprise, some will be subsidizing the work of others for the good of all.  In this case, I believe we are creating the opportunity for a better student experience by providing some classes that are unique, or of limited (but not no) interest, as that makes our university a better place to be a student. In addition, faculty expertise in different areas allows cross-fertilization of ideas.

I understand the perspective that "we deserve all the perks and benefits because we are a profit center for the college," I just don't agree with it as a philosophy for a life's work.  However, I acknowledge that I work for a non-profit and have idealistic views of how working together means that we can achieve more than working alone, exclusively for individual profit.