<p>I was recently reading the strategic plan for a college my son is considering attending, and they listed the Instruction Expenses per FTE (meaning full-time student) for their school and their competitive schools.</p>
<p>Does anyone know where I can find a list of this data for all schools? It sounds like it is readily available.</p>
<p>Search “cost of attendance” on each college’s web site.
Or try [CollegeData:</a> College Search, Financial Aid, College Application, College Scholarship, Student Loan, FAFSA Info, Common Application](<a href=“http://www.collegedata.com%5DCollegeData:”>http://www.collegedata.com) .</p>
<p>But if you want a net cost estimate after applying need-based financial aid, you need to go to each college’s “net price calculator” on its web site. Colleges vary a lot in need-based financial aid generosity, so two colleges with the same list price may have very different net costs after need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>I think you misunderstood my question. I’m not trying to determine the cost of attendance or the net cost.</p>
<p>What I’m looking for is the actual amount that a college spends on instruction, as opposed to on athletics, meals, rooms, research, etc. It appears form the information on this link (<a href=“http://www.sunyit.edu/home5/cmsfiles/provost/SUNYITStrategicPlan2020-DRAFT.pdf[/url]”>http://www.sunyit.edu/home5/cmsfiles/provost/SUNYITStrategicPlan2020-DRAFT.pdf</a>) that this figure is publicly available. See page 33, where they list Instruction Expenses / FTE.</p>
<p>For example, this report lists that SUNY IT spends $6,573 per full-time equivalent student on instruction per year, while Clarkson spends $12,438 per FTE, and RIT spends $15,499.</p>
<p>Does anyone know a source for this data?</p>
<p>its not a terribly easy database to navigate, by what you want is here:</p>
<p>[IPEDS</a> Data Center - Login](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/login.aspx]IPEDS”>http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/login.aspx)</p>
<p>When costs of instruction are computed, I think they usually (and wrongly) allocate the salaries of professors, even at research universities, entirely to teaching expense, even though many professors spend more time on research than teaching. This is discussed in a presentation
[Appropriate Means of Allocating
Costs for Instruction – or –
What Do Student Fees Actually Pay
For at a Research University?
Seminar at the Center for Studies in Higher
Education, UC Berkeley October 9, 2008
by Charles Schwartz
Professor Emeritus of Physics, UC Berkeley](<a href=“Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services”>Socrates and Berkeley Scholars Web Hosting Services Have Been Retired | Web Platform Services)
</p>
<p>Thanks, Erica. And you’re right - this is complicated to navigate.</p>
<p>This data is available if you buy the Do It Yourself college spreadsheet. There is a lot of good data there, but you do have to pay for it. I found it useful to have easy access to a lot of specific data.</p>
<p>[DIY</a> College Rankings College Search Spreadsheet](<a href=“http://diycollegerankings.com/diy-college-rankings-college-search-spreadsheet-2/]DIY”>College Spreadsheet - 2023)</p>
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<p>Interesting resource – I may buy it when my children are applying. How accurate is the data? Have you verified the data for some of the schools that interest you?</p>
<p>Thanks, Sacchi. I was able to pull the data I needed (with some work) from the IPEDS Data Center. This may be helpful for my daughter when she applies next year.</p>
<p>Beliavsky: This data appears to be pulled from the IPEDS Data Center directly, so if I’m right, this is the data that the schools report to the government (they are required by law to report this, so if they cheat and it is discovered in an audit, they’re in big trouble).</p>
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<p>Well, there’s “cheating” and then there’s fudging, or simply presenting themselves in the most favorable light without clearly lying.</p>
<p>Consider student/faculty ratios, which I believe are also reported to the government as part of the IPEDS data. In calculating student/faculty ratios, schools are supposed to exclude both students and faculty in “stand-alone” graduate and professional programs, which normally includes things like medical, law, and at some (but not all) universities business schools; also dental schools, divinity schools, what have you. But if you compare the way Harvard calculates its s/f ratio to the way Penn does it, you’ll see they’re very different–and both are different from the way most public universities do it. Penn counts only undergrads in the “student” count, and it counts all its faculty in the “faculty” count. Harvard also counts only undergrads in the “student” count, but it excludes more than half its total number of faculty from the “faculty” count, apparently on grounds they’re teaching in “stand-alone” graduate/professional programs. Consequently, when Penn claims a stellar 6:1 student/faculty ratio, it just doesn’t mean the same thing as when Harvard says it has a 7:1 student/faculty ratio, because Penn is basing its ratio on a count of all the faculty on campus, while Harvard is basing its ratio on a count of only those faculty who actually teach undergrads. Is Penn “cheating”? Well, maybe, but I assume they’d just say they’re construing the instructions differently. If Harvard calculated its s/f ratio the way Penn does, Havard’s s/f ratio would be 3:1, not 7:1.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, for purposes of calculating its student/faculty ratio, Wisconsin counts as “students” not only undergrads, but graduate students in non-stand-alone graduate programs (e.g., English, history, sciences, etc.) where faculty teach both graduate students and undergrads; and like Harvard, it excludes some faculty who teach in “stand-alone” graduate and professional programs. Using that methodology, it ends up with a 17:1 student/faculty ratio, which sounds a lot worse than Penn or Harvard until you realize these “objective” figures aren’t comparing apples to apples. If Wisconsin calculated its s/f ratio the way Penn does, it would end up closer to 11:1—higher than Penn to be sure, but not so far from a lot of private colleges and universities. Most public universities use the same methodology as Wisconsin; most private universities do as Penn and Harvard do and include only undergrads in the “student” count, but relatively few go so far as Penn in counting only undergrads as “students” and counting all faculty as “faculty” for this purpose.</p>
<p>“Cheating”? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is, the data are not necessarily comparable because schools count different things, and I take Beliavsky’s point to be that the same may apply to reported cost-of-instruction figures.</p>