I don't mean to start a troll thread or stir the pot, but wonder if anyone else feels that at least some Virginia colleges are out of control with what they are charging v/s the money they have in the bank, or am I just irritated because of my kids college bills?

If I read this right UVA had $5.3 billion sitting in the bank in 13-14 for their endowment.  I'm not opposed to using my tax money to make our children smarter and provide more educated and employable citizens in this great Old Dominion, but if colleges like UVA has over five billion dollars in the bank and they are getting state funding, why does it cost parents $100K to get them through 4 years of school?  Am I missing something?

I constantly get calls from my wife's alma mater and the school my daughter currently attends (W&M) asking for donations.  They help themselves to the state funds (again OK with that), charge a whole bunch of money for a in-state education, then they want to come back for more?  I'm always polite to the college kids on the phone, but no way.

I'll just say when a state school (a public non- or not-for-profit or otherwise educational) MAKES money yet then doesn't reevaluate student costs, I have a big issue.  Public school are at least on some level funded by the public.  That's all, just wanted to say that.  My wife is a teacher, giving me a different perspective at times.  But we don't share the same innocent view of the world, either.


(BTW, I'm sick of school.  I'm pre-paying for two kids, that will be there in 6 years, plus I'm finishing my doctorate degree which is not cheap.)

When you look at how fast and how large GMU has built itself up over the last 15 years, it's pretty obvious that it's not for altruism.

Thanks for the feedback, sometimes I feel like a cranky old man, but when I see the way things are getting it makes my crazy.

BTW - Keep saving for those kids!  I have two also, and my oldest only has one year to go at W&M, my son will be in college in another three.  We saved hard enough and long enough to get ours through, you will too; they will be much more capable of supporting us in our old age.  

UVA is about as close to a private school as you can get in terms of its finances. 5% of its budget comes from state appropriations, translating to less than 10% of the academic budget. The law school effectively is private in that regard as the numbers are even smaller there.

Endowments are investment vehicles use by universities to do things like service tax-exempt debt, which is in turn used to finance things like big buildings and other capital improvements. Or, in some cases, to endow professorships. The money isn't just "sitting there" like a Scrooge McDuck money pit - it IS being used, as collateral and as a platform to generate income needed for these things.

Part of the income generate from it often is used to help finance "financial aid." Endowment income contributions do go into the operating budget, and this is effectively what they're doing - making up for that missing slice of the pie from people who don't pay full tuition. So, the lesson there is that if you want cheaper higher education, you should make sure your parents are poor and don't save anything for you. So you can plead poverty and get your "fair share." Planning ahead and being financially successful is for suckers.

Has anyone played with the Virginia 529 prepaid calculator recently? That should scream something at you...

That cost just pays for tuition, no books, board, etc. If you select 8 semesters at a four year school, paid of over 17 years, you owe them $535 a month. Multiply that by 204 months and you would pay $109,000 for 8 semesters of tuition. Everyone needs to make their money...

Just a FYI this is a play on words that is played back to us taxpayers all the time.  I was educated about this by the W&M president when we attended a alumni banquet we went to.  Mr. Reveley answered an question from an alumni who brought up this figure and Mr. Reveley kindly replied that that while they could use more $$, this is 1/2 the picture.  He went on to say that the operational budget was a part of this pie also and was a much larger slice of state funds.  He went further to say that the state was funding a new building and he was grateful to the Old Dominion for their support.  Mr. Reveley finished by saying that there was a long partnership between the state and his institution.

Honestly I came away with a great deal of respect for this guy; he was in a very pro-tax crowd and he told the truth with a gentle message to look at the whole picture.  He won a big fan in me that day.

FWIW I'm not a W&M alumni (or college graduate for that matter), I just married up.

I think your number (109,000) is reality.  I have a year left to go and between all of the additional costs we will be around 100.

Colleges really push the study abroad thing these days, it cost me an extra 10K.  I had not budgeted for that.  Books, don't get me started, I paid $500 for a book for my daughter this year.  No book ever printed is worth $500.

No, it's not a play on words. The budgets are published, they're online. You can look at them. I wouldn't be surprised if W&M had a much larger proportion of its budget from the state than UVA. As I said, UVA is close to private in the financial regard. I'm a W&M Law alum, I know Taylor Reveley well - he was the law school dean when I was there. His nickname was "The Big Smooth" - he can work any crowd with great skill. That's why they made him the president of the whole school, which is essentially a fundraising figurehead job.

I know how endowments work, I was a student rep for mine at undergrad (which had a $1 billion+ endowment in the 1990s for 1400 students) and had the whole system explained to me by one of the finance professors as part of that. When they build a new building, for example, even if they get a huge donation for naming rights, that money goes right into the endowment where it can earn private rates of return with non-profit tax status. The building is then financed using tax-exempt bonds which pay a much lower rate of interest. So the debt can be serviced at 2% while the money earns 8%, and you still have your building.

I don't know the details of the building that Reveley mentioned to you, but it's highly likely that the financing of it has been structured in some manner and isn't an outright bequest from the state. For example, it could be financed with tax-exempt bonds with the school's budget bearing some of the debt-servicing burden.

HERE are the charts for UVA. Notice, for example, that endowment contributions to both the overall and academic budgets are higher than the state funding.

The number I quoted is for tuition only. That's it. That currently runs about 10,200 a year for a full time student at a Virginia public university.

Most people five years ago didn't study abroad, nor is it a requirement for a degree. The one girl I know who had to do it for grad school doesn't even use her degrees by working in her field of study. YMMV.

VA public colleges/universities are a bargain, regardless of whatever their endowment is.  Many of the private schools that accepted my daughter charged twice as much.  Some more.  One was 55K per year.  Per year.

My daughter graduates in May from Mason and our biggest problem is that we will have a little bit leftover in her 529.  It's a good problem.

She also loved it there and is now trying to decide between taking a job after graduation where she has been interning or accepting a post-graduation internship offer with a prominent firm in London.

My wife and I definitely feel like we got our money's worth.

The vast majority of the tuition increases in the last decade or so have come from the availability of easy money from the Federal .gov. It used to be that to get a $100k loan, an actual bank would determine whether the degree you were getting would land you a job where it was highly probable that you'd be able to pay back the loan. Now, with the all-powerful-Obamagov, the .gov hands out money directly to anybody for any major, regardless of their future ability to pay.

If you want to know why tuition is high, it's because the Feral Government has not only removed all incentive to be cost effective, but has created an incentive NOT to be. Now, consider what's going to happen if Ostupid gets his way on free junior college. Care to guess what's going to happen to the cost of that "free" junior college? Yep, going to suddenly triple overnight. Why wouldn't it? If you were a school scrambling to get students who could afford to go there and suddenly anybody can take classes now because they're not the ones paying, it only makes sense that you'd raise rates and keep raising them to make more money.

No cost control = higher tuition.

Did student loans ever actually work that way, with individualized underwriting?

What era was this?  Interesting passage from the VA Tech University studies:

Though many students declare a major before entering a university, many students also change their majors an average of three times before graduating! It would seem many more college students are really “undecided” when they enter as freshmen than admissions numbers may indicate. If you are uncertain, you should take the time to explore the possibilities available to you rather than make an arbitrary decision that may prove unsatisfactory later.

FAFSA has does not require that you declare a degree Question 30 can be Other / undecided.

Much like how it works for wealthy people, you don't spend the money in the bank. You spend what you earn off that money. It's usually a good bit less.