So You Want to Examine Your University's Financial Reports?
While there is room to argue over the details of my calculation, there can be no denying that the accepted method for calculating the per-student “cost of delivering undergraduate education” is not just a little bit misleading—it is a big lie. I’m aiming that accusation not just at my own institution but at all research universities, both private and public. This ought to be a scandal—and some day it will be, yet none of the respectable leaders of higher education have been willing to face up to it. Aside from the grossly false information being given out by the research universities to students and their families (and to taxpayers and their representatives in government), academe’s distorted accounting habits poison the efforts of well-meaning scholars who rely on such data sources as IPEDS to conduct quantitative studies of our industry.
Read full article [here].
by Charles Schwartz, The Chronicle of Higher Education.