Dreaming of a Cheap University

The fantasy of a bare-bones university, strong on instruction and miserly on everything else, seems to be a common one these days. Alan Jacobs:

I am waiting for some bold college president to come forth and say, “You won’t find especially nice dorms at our college. They’re clean and neat, but there’s nothing fancy about them. We don’t have a climbing wall. Our food services offer simple food, made as often as possible with fresh ingredients, but we couldn’t call it gourmet eating. There are no 55-inch flat-screen TVs in the lounges of our dorms. We don’t have these amenities because we decided instead to invest in full-time, permanent faculty who are genuinely dedicated to teaching and advising you well and preparing you for life after college. So if you want the state-of-the-art rec center, that’s cool, but just remember that the price you’ll pay for that is to have most of your classes taught by graduate students and contingent faculty, the first of whom won’t have the experience and the second of whom won’t have the time to be the kind of teachers you need (even when, as is often the case, they really want to be). Our priorities here are pretty much the reverse of those that dominate many other schools. So think about that, and make a wise decision.”

Freddie de Boer:

Here's the bargain students make. You don't get all of the stuff you get at so many universities. No vortex pool; no sushi chefs in the dining hall; no dorms designed by Frank Gehry. You'll get what you need. We'll have computer labs, but they won't be at every corner of the campus like they are in most. Your dorms will be like dorms from the seventies: utilitarian, not very big, but serviceable and homey. And, sorry: you don't get the truly endless amount of student services on offer at most colleges now. That set of clubs and activities and events that could fill a phone book, we don't have that here. Not just because they cost money in and of themselves but because they take staff, and a huge part of the current tuition crisis boils down to the explosion in administration. You can organize clubs and activities and we'll give you spaces in the common areas to do them, but it's gonna be a shoestring affair. You'll have to make things work with your own fundraising and effort. Intramural Ultimate Frisbee sounds doable. Intramural crew does not. And I'm afraid you're going to have to settle for intramural and club teams you can cobble together, because there will be no NCAA varsity sports in this university system. . . . .  So if they're giving up these things, what do they get? They get a school that is dedicated to providing excellent teaching and career and personal development at a tiny fraction of the cost of many major universities.

I think these bloggers are deluding themselves about how cheap such schools could be -- de Boer suggests $2500 a year for his schools -- but it really would be possible to make education cheaper. That we don't see more colleges doing something like this makes me wonder how severe our alleged university funding crisis really is.