March 11, 2006
John L. Hennessy, President
Stanford University
president@stanford.edu
Dear President Hennessy;
An official statement from Stanford University, published February 15,
2006, reports that undergraduate tuition for next year will be
set at $32,994 (this does not include room and board). We then read,
“It is important to note that the money the university collects from
tuition covers only about 60 percent of the costs of educating an
undergraduate.” This grossly misstates the truth about university
financing since the commonly used method of calculating “cost of
education” at our research universities bundles together the costs of
undergraduate education plus graduate education plus faculty
(departmental) research.
Using a variety of official data available for the University of
California, I have been able to disaggregate the cost of undergraduate
education here and I conclude that student fees at UC (now just under
$7,000 per student) amount to 100% of the actual average expenditure on
undergraduate education. I have also been able to extend this analysis
(approximately) to other leading research universities; and I estimate
that at Stanford University the actual expenditure for undergraduate
education is about $16,000 per student per year. (See my papers posted
at http://ocf.berkeley.edu/~schwrtz )
Thus, a truthful explanation of the tuition level at Stanford
University would be something like the following.
While the actual expenditure directed
to undergraduate education at Stanford is only about half of that
tuition ($32,994 per student per year), it is important to recognize
the importance of the other half, which is mostly spent in support of
the university faculty’s research endeavors and related graduate
programs. The research accomplishments of our faculty are of great
significance to the whole of society and are responsible for the
outstanding international reputation of Stanford University. That
reputation adds greatly to the value of any diploma Stanford awards to
its students; and we believe this justifies the added cost which we
pass on as tuition.
I would be greatly interested in your reaction to this.
Sincerely,
Charles Schwartz
Professor Emeritus of Physics
UC Berkeley
(and, long ago, a junior faculty member at Stanford)