The Journal has done a number of good articles on spending and cost increases as US universities. This one was a deeper dive on Auburn as an exceptional example of a public college that has increases costs fastere than most and, not surprisingly, disproportionately increased spending on administration and non-direct teaching costs.
Free gift link.
Thanks for sharing. I went to college way too early!!
This shows/prices to people that forget - college is big business !! And institutional goals don’t necessarily match a families expectation or initial belief as their kids pursue a degree.
It’s too bad that public universities in particular have been allowed to stray from the educational mission. The cliche (which I don’t believe) is that Harvard is a hedge fund that happens to operate a college as a tax strategy. But public universities should be first, second and third about accessible student education. If they want to have self-sustaining sports after that, go for it.
The common theme in all of these articles over the last few years is bloated administrative costs.
The colleges all love to cite that they are in an “arms race.” Is there any data that this is actually true? Meaning, that if a college doesn’t compete for more expensive and number of administrators, new dorms, new sports facilities, etc, that the average quality of their attending students or retained faculty decline? Aren’t those the only metrics that should matter?
I think the also ran schools pedigree wise - that are looking to grow - are in an arms race.
And while their costs are higher than they should be, they’re still much cheaper than a say - WUSTL - and those type schools are also flouting features. Hey, we have Tempurpedic beds.
So it could be and perhaps we see it in some flagships (I’m not sure) - that if they don’t create the pizazz, they don’t grow. Lots of non-flagships (that I assume don’t get this investment) are in financial trouble.
As long as these schools keep growing - and they are - they’d continue to spend.
After all, it’s a social media, more is better world.
Not saying it’s right - in fact, we all love football but you are harming someone’s long term physical health- (yes, there are benefits to being on a team)…so why would a college even offer this, etc.
$$ - college is business - big salaries, big budgets, big everything…
Someone put out an article on Birmingham Southern the other day…barely afloat.
There is similarity (over spend) but one can support its debt and the other can’t.
this! I won’t watch football at all any more.
My parents don’t donate to their colleges as a protest basically against rising tuition.
Football can be the poster child for sure - but lets not kid ourselves. Hockey? Soccer (CTE just as prevalent), Basketball, Gymnastics, etc. Many other sports cause long term health issues - either from contact or simple repetitive motion.
Back to the topic though. Completely agree with @tsbna44 that college is big business. Auburn’s rates have certainly gone up but so have their application numbers. If they find kids/families willing to pay the bill because they see the value proposition of going to that school then kudo’s to Auburn. The problem with debt is that it’s long term and kids can be fickle and todays “hot school” 5 years from not may not be.
The good news is that it’s a free market and if Auburn is vacating a spot in the “value” category of schools - it creates a vacuum in that category for some other school to fill that mission. WSJ would do its readers a better service if it highlighted schools where one might get a comparable education - though maybe not with all the frills - at a much reduced cost.
Yeah, actually, no. Only a few cases of CTE have been reported among professional soccer players
Whereas one study found over 90% of former professional football players had CTE.
Injuries happen in any sport, but Americans really need to understand the carnage that is football.
I’ll chalk up my “just as prevalent” comment to fatigue after a late NYE. 
Might be an interesting conversation for a different thread. Not sure this is an “Americans” thing though.
I note that their full in-state cost of attendance was apparently $31,282 in 2017-18, up to $34,401 in 2022-23, an increase of 10.0%.
$31,282 in September 2017 adjusted for inflation would be worth $37,617.64 in September 2022, an increase of 20.3%. Meaning in that period, Auburn’s full in-state cost of attendance has gone down quite a bit in inflation-adjusted terms, since it rose less than half the general inflation rate.
Average net cost data lags, but in-state it was $22,281 in 2017, and an estimated $23,749 in 2022, an increase of 6.6%. So, average net cost has gone down (estimated) in inflation-adjusted terms even more than full cost, since it rose less than one third the general inflation rate.
Of course before that period, costs at Auburn and elsewhere did increase faster than general inflation. But I think it tends to be underreported how that trend has changed in recent years.
This is where I disagree. That may be true if it were a private school Though even then its reasonable to question the “non-profit” status of such schools. But Auburn is both a public school and a “land grant” college that came into existence from us the public giving up public land to fund it. It exists, or should exist, to provide accessible higher education. It shouldn’t exist to make money or chase a more and more affluent clientele, or to find ways to milk more and more public money from the student loan industrial complex. If they could demonstrate that spending all this money prevents them from otherwise ceasing to exist and therefore denying access to students who otherwise could not get a public education, that would make sense. I’m dubious such a case has been made.
Instead it feels more like leadership (the trustees, the presidents, etc.) has lost the original mission and reinvented one that serves their own selfish purposes. The 1,400% increase in expenses for trustees and 400% increase in the budget of the President’s office suggests the possibility. And I don’t think the WSJ is suggesting this is unique, rather just that it’s a good example of the national trend.
Out of curiosity, I compared public Auburn U in suburban/rural Alabama to my son’s housing and dining costs at one of the most expensive private schools in one of the most expensive cities in the country. Their cheapest housing, if you can get it, is less than my son’s college, but that low Auburn rate was the exception. Most of their housing options were equal to or even more expensive than my son’s college. The dining plan was cheaper at Auburn, but not by a lot. If you added up housing and dining, it was about on par with the major metro private. And apparently Auburn now makes a dining plan a mandatory fee even if you live off campus, something not true on my son’s college if you opt to live off campus after first year.
On the flip side, my son is in a 100 year old dorm that has only been lightly renovated in decades. I’m sure all the debt has created some nice, if unnecessarily nice, housing at Auburn.
Tuition though is much lower at Auburn, both for in-state and out-of-state.
I suspect they will. This article is part of an ongoing series on higher education that trials back at least a year or more. They clearly started with the observation that college costs have risen faster than inflation and started deep diving on the data and the why. Several of their pieces in this loose series have been interesting.
Public university tuition inflation does seem to occur at different times from general inflation. Much of it occurs during downturns in state tax revenue that lead to reduction in state subsidy to universities (2008-2012 being an example).
I also think a big and sometimes underreported factor is that many public systems were expanding enrollment for a long time, and it was particularly growing rapidly in the 2000 to 2010 time frame. But starting around 2010, enrollment leveled off, and then actually started decreasing. Alabama is one of the many states in which system-wide enrollment decreased, right around the national average in fact:
And again there are nuances. Like, some of the “national” but not most selective publics are often going after increasing percentages of OOS students, including students who could not get admitted to the most selective publics in their home state. They are doing that in part to address the overall shrinking pool of potential students in their states, but also because they charge a lot more net tuition to OOS students.
And so when you combine this together–dramatic cutbacks to new capacity projects, and then shifting some share of existing capacity to higher-paying OOS students, you again get favorable conditions for decreasing inflation-adjusted in-state tuition/average cost of attendance.
Anyway, it is all very complicated. But yes, there are some very fundamental economic reasons involving basic supply and demand issues that help explain the very different cost trends in different recent periods.
Funny - I think i’ve given maybe $100 or $200 over 30 years to mine but feel compelled to send some in to both kid’s colleges - like Hillel, etc. or certain programs…a few hundred each year…for how long I don’t know…but both have been incredibly generous merit wise. I feel something should be repaid - but to legit things, best I can vs. enhanced althletics, etc.
I can understand and appreciate your point of view. I cannot speak directly to Alabama but i worked at a public university in the 90’s. Budget/annual plans were subject to review by a central board of higher ed and further to State legislators. I can’t imagine there isn’t a similar structure in place for Auburn.
Free Gift Link is still behind a paywall when I click it.
It expired sometime since last December.
I didn’t even notice the date 
I completely agree. I walk around my big name alma mater and think are these new buildings all worth it? Do we really need all this? Is it contributing to student outcomes? Our big name sports teams are fun but are, at best, mediocre. Let’s perhaps use that billion dollar endowment to reduce tuition for all.
I generally agree with this, but I am going to play devil’s advocate here when it comes to Auburn athletics. In the South, sports reign supreme and I can’t foresee universities getting rid of their athletic programs anytime in the near future. I am unable to access the WSJ article, but there seems to be a lot of criticism of the athletic expenditures without acknowledging that Auburn’s athletic department makes a profit for the university - $9 million system wide in 2023. The football program even as mediocre as it’s been in recent years is turning a profit of $53 million.
How much money did Auburn and Alabama make from sports in 2023?.
