The Rise of College Tuition on Public Universities

Trends on the rise of college tuition over the last decade.

College tuition has become a major issue facing students over the last decade.  The rising price of public university tuition across the country has played a huge factor in student’s decisions on where to attend and how to finance their education.  Over the last decade, tuition fees have increased 5.4 percent annually.  This is 2.24% above the inflation rate in 2011 which was 3.16%.  With the rise of college tuition surpassing the inflation rate, we are seeing that the financial burden is hitting students deep in their pockets.  Since education is the common pathway to financial and personal success, we need to know the reasons for increased costs, and how to combat these issues.  

         
Decline of government spending on education directly impacts public universities and students.

In the last decade, government funding for public universities has dropped by 21%.  14.6% of that decline has happened since the 2008 recession, which has caused the average tuition at state institutions to rise by 33.1%.  This heavy burden has caused state institution’s to raise their tuition costs to be able to finance the necessary resources and capital to keep their institution running.  This has put burdensome costs on students.  In the last four years, the average cost that individual students have paid has gone from 24% to 30%.  While parents are taking on a lot of student’s tuition costs, the rising costs have seemed to be limiting them to be able to meet all of the financial needs of their child.  This has caused an 8% increase in student loans since last year.  By cutting funding to public universities, we are seeing a direct effect on rising rates of students loans, which is putting many students into deep financial debt straight out of college. 

         
Rising cost of highly educated work forces drives college tuition up.

In a technologically focused society, it is easy to see productivity rise at accelerated rates when increases in technology occur.   When this happens, the need for labor decreases, which in turn forces prices to decreases.  While this seems like an easy way to describe how to fix a situation in a manufacturing environment, Dr. Cindy Clement, the director of Undergraduate Studies in Economics at the University of Maryland, explains how education is a service, and services do not always react to technological changes in the same way.  

Dr. Clement explains that with the need for a highly educated labor force, in an environment demanding higher educated labor with the skills necessary to teach in an evolving technological enviornment, incurring costs for that labor increase.  To meet this the demand of labor, public universities must act by increasing tuition costs. 

           
How to combat rising tuition costs.

Part of President Obama’s plan during his campaign for presidency was to cut college tuition in half over the next decade.  While this seems like a great idea, Dr. Clement states that “this could be accomplished, but the quality of education will decline significantly.”  To maintain the quality of education and decrease the price of tuition for students, Clement states that “we will have to use technology much more effectively then we have done to date.” 

There have been many strides to accomplish this such as MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses).  But how credible are these?  Getting an education online can be looked down upon for the validity of someone’s education.  While recording classes and sending them out to the masses to take decreases the amount of labor and facility use significantly, the quality of education can decline as well.  This type of education will provide less teacher student interaction, peer learning environments, and validity of student work.  In order to have the quality and validity of education to stay the same or even increase, we must find new approaches.

A great example of this is Journalism 150 at the University of Maryland.  This course provides a blended atmosphere where students receive both in class instruction while also being provided online instruction.  While the labor of the instructor remains the same, it requires less facility time, which can in turn save money.  Another benefit to this class is that it enables all materials and assignments to be online, cutting costs of materials and only needing personal devices to accomplish class requirements.  While this is a great format for certain classes, it is difficult to apply this method to every class at a university.  Blended learning environments are a great step in using technology to increase the quality of education, but to cut costs in half, there needs to be significant new technological developments and methods in the coming years to provide the structure of education to remain at such a high level.

Students are facing difficult decisions today about the payoff of high costing tuition.  It is putting many students into debt after college and causing many students to take different paths in obtaining their degrees.   While we are moving forward every day by developing more and more technology, it is essential to figure out how to implement that technology with new educational methods to cut tuition costs while maintaining its educational quality.  

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College tuition + Outline

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College Tuition Outline

Introduction: I am going to start off the article by stating some basic statistics of the rise of college tuition.  Intertwined in the introduction I will have a graphic that shows trends of college tuition over the last 10 years.  This will include that college tuition has risen 5.1% since 2001.  Funding from State University's has fallen by 21 percent nationally.  Public funding has dropped by 14.6% since the recession.  Average price after grants for tuition has risen about 33.1 percent.  Pell grants are blamed for driving costs up because when lower income students receive federal funding to attend college, some argue that institutions raise their prices to reflect the aid of the federal government.  Lastly, decrease in state and local funding of public universities is seen to be the main issue by economists, especially after the recession. This causes students to take out bigger loans that will be burdensome in the future. I will then go into how these issues are affecting students and how they finance their college tuition.  This can include taking out more loans and higher rates of students going to community college for 2 years and then transferring to larger universities.  After giving a brief overview of the issue at hand, I will narrow my intro into what I am going to be talking about specifically.  This will include the price of the educator and the price of credibility behind what students are learning.  I will address the main reasons state funding has been cut nationally.  Lastly I will address President Obama’s plan to cut college tuition in half in the next decade by looking into alternative education arena’s that could make this possible.   

Section 1: Rising cost of Services

·         VIDEO (1) Dr. Clement on the reasons of rising cost of tuition

·         Unlike the production industry, increasing technology does not necessarily increase education outcome.

·         A highly competitive education system requires a highly educated staff.  To retain this staff, it is costly to get their expertise at a competitive salary. 

·         State funding decreases due to Recession and recent cut backs

Section 2: Hurdles Obama faces cutting college tuition in the next decade

·         VIDEO (2) Dr. Clement on Obama

·         Quality of education will decrease

·         He must use technology more effectively (MOOCS)

o   Mold into a college education

o   How legitimate is that

·         More blended courses such as J150?

o   Less meeting time = less hours in class spent by teachers and less facticity use by students

Matt and Jeff on rising college tuition

listen to ‘College tuition rising 2’ on Audioboo

listen to ‘College tuition rising’ on Audioboo

College Tuition Outline

Introduction: I am going to start off the article by stating some basic statistics of the rise of college tuition.  Intertwined in the introduction I will have a graphic that shows trends of college tuition over the last 10 years.  This will include that college tuition has risen 5.1% since 2001.  Funding from State University's has fallen by 21 percent nationally.  Public funding has dropped by 14.6% since the recession.  Average price after grants for tuition has risen about 33.1 percent.  Pell grants are blamed for driving costs up because when lower income students receive federal funding to attend college, some argue that institutions raise their prices to reflect the aid of the federal government.  Lastly, decrease in state and local funding of public universities is seen to be the main issue by economists, especially after the recession. This causes students to take out bigger loans that will be burdensome in the future. I will then go into how these issues are affecting students and how they finance their college tuition.  This can include taking out more loans and higher rates of students going to community college for 2 years and then transferring to larger universities.  After giving a brief overview of the issue at hand, I will narrow my intro into what I am going to be talking about specifically.  This will include the price of the educator and the price of credibility behind what students are learning.  I will address the main reasons state funding has been cut nationally.  Lastly I will address President Obama’s plan to cut college tuition in half in the next decade by looking into alternative education arena’s that could make this possible.   

Section 1: Rising cost of Services

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->VIDEO (1) Dr. Clement on the reasons of rising cost of tuition

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Unlike the production industry, increasing technology does not necessarily increase education outcome.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->A highly competitive education system requires a highly educated staff.  To retain this staff, it is costly to get their expertise at a competitive salary. 

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->State funding decreases due to Recession and recent cut backs

Section 2: Hurdles Obama faces cutting college tuition in the next decade

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->VIDEO (2) Dr. Clement on Obama

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->Quality of education will decrease

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->He must use technology more effectively (MOOCS)

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o   <!--[endif]-->Mold into a college education

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o   <!--[endif]-->How legitimate is that

<!--[if !supportLists]-->·         <!--[endif]-->More blended courses such as J150?

<!--[if !supportLists]-->o   <!--[endif]-->Less meeting time = less hours in class spent by teachers and less facticity use by students

NBC News App: Bringing Everything You Need to Your Mobile Phone

NBC News app provides its audience the ability to connect to any type of news relevant to their lives.  Whether it is sports, entertainment, business, or politics, the NBC news app enables the user to get their news on the fly.  Through articles, video, and images, this app provides everything an online website would provide, but on a portable device.  

One really cool interactive feature is its opening news wheel.  Instead of having the normal bar across the top breaking up news categories, it has a spinning wheel that makes it easy to navigate.  Once you are in each individual category, there is a nice, easy to read, list of articles displaying both the title and a small image to engage the reader into that particular piece.  

To engage more with its users, the NBC News App enables you to customize your app to your liking.  It enables you to have breaking news alerts so you get up to date news coverage whenever it happens. You are able to sign in using social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter to share information with friends and family.  Along the lines of display, you are able to choose your own color schema such as white on black or black on white.  A new feature that they have that many apps do not provide is called Instapaper.  Instapaper enables you to save articles for later reading whether you are connected to internet or not.  This is crucial for reading on subway systems, especially in a suburban area like Washington DC where you lose service due to going underground all of the time on the metro.  

While most news apps have their basic news with articles and short media clips, the NBC news app provides something that sets it apart from all other apps.  It enables you to view their top shows on tv through your phone.  Shows such as the Today show, Dateline NBC and the Nightly News are all available at the touch of your phone. The only problem that I have with this is this is that it cuts up the show into into segments and not a full show due to the fact that you can only hold so much video on one upload.  This makes it annoying to keep going back and forth to see a whole show.  

Overall, this is the best news app that I have seen out on the market.  Seeing that it has a review rating of 4.5/5 on the user ratings on the iTunes store, NBC obviously connects to their audience in an efficient and entertaining way that keeps them coming back.  

Streaming Video Changes the Way the Public Watches Popular Media

Streaming video has come a long way in the last 10 years. The amount of time that you had to wait to listen or watch anything downloaded was, most of the time, longer than the actual program you were going to watch. The dreaded buffering circle on your screen or the buffering percentage stuck on 66% for 15 minutes would drive views insane to the point where they would just leave and forget about the program. Now, streaming video has taken over the TV, movie, and radio business. With websites such as Youtube, Hulu, Metacafe, and Vimeo, you can pretty much watch any TV show ever made instantly on your computer with little to no waiting time. With the technology today, you can stream video to your smart phone, or even watch live broadcasts of SportsCenter or Monday Night Football straight from your phone. The increase in popularity of streaming video has changed how the public watches video, which in turn is changing the business of how it is distributed.

What is Streaming Video? 

Streaming video came into effect after the hassle of dialup’s slow internet connections. Downloading videos could take hours at a time to finish and became an annoyance to deal with. People wanted a faster way to view video’s from their computers to watch, TV shows, movies, and simple videos uploaded from individuals all over the world. Streaming video works by compressing a video file on the internet. Instead of having to download a whole file to watch something, video data is continuously being sent to your computer as you watch it. This enables you to watch your video right away. Once the compressed video is sent to your computer, a special program on your computer (software usually in your browser) uncompresses that file to be able to watch. This enables you to watch video instantly at your convenience. Whether you missed the latest episode of Lost, or a movie you do not want to go out and rent, streaming video enables you to access that show or movie instantly on your computer.

Streaming Video is Destroying the DVD Business. 

With the strong improvements of streaming video over the last couple of years, going out to rent a movie has become almost nonexistent. The hassle of leaving your home to go find a movie has become too much for the average consumer. The convenience of being able to go online and accessing your favorite show or move instantly is so appealing to the consumer that DVD rental businesses are struggling to stay afloat. In an article written by Jacqui Cheng on arstechnica.com, she states that “outside of Netflix and the online video niche, the trend can only mean bad things for physical media like traditional DVD and Blue-ray”. She goes on to say that customers are willing to settle for less quality video such as standard-definition on Netflix, or VOD instead of “walking to the corner Blockbuster or even waiting for a DVD in the mail from Netflix”. Customers want their product the fastest and most efficient way possible which is why streaming video from your TV or internet is the growing trend today. This trend has put many DVD rental businesses out of business and has opened up a new market for online businesses to thrive. With this trend, companies have had to make drastic changes. Netflix, a company who used to be a DVD business who mailed DVD’s to their consumer has had to change their business model to fit their consumer. Enabling consumers to rent their DVD’s online, they have seen a “26 percent increase in subscribers year-over-year and a 19 percent year-over-year growth in revenue” (Cheng). This has expanded into partnering with XBOX live as well as cable providers to enable customers to access movies not only from the internet, but directly to their TV, letting them view their desired content from whatever medium they wish. Streaming video has changed the way the public watches their video content. Moving away from physical DVD’s and other means of watching their favorite video content, online streaming makes it simple and instant for the consumer. With this exploding trend, it would not be surprising to see a complete end to the movie rental business, and see an expanding market in the online movie rental business.

 Cheng, Jacqui. "ArsTechnica." Ars Technica. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2012. .

<http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/01/streaming-video-cannibalizing-dvd-rentals-says-netflix/>.

Key Indicators for Advertisers choosing to implement their ads include Ratings and Shares:

Ratings and shares let producers, TV networks, and other people invested in specific shows know who and how many people are watching their show.  This enables them to know if their show is popular or not in regards to other shows on television.  Ratings are the percentage of people watching a program out of all possible TV households (with TV’s on or off).  Shares on the other hand are shown as the percentage of those actually using the televisions that are tuned into your station or network at a specific time.   

This information is so valuable to advertisers because they can see what their target audience is watching and how to reach them the most.  A great example of this is through taking a look at last Saturday’s tv ratings of college football.  Nielsen TV ratings reported that 4.01 million people tuned into the Wisconsin vs. Nebraska game on ABC, and 3.57 million people tuned into the Texas at Oklahoma State Game on FOX.  Of those games, viewers ages 18-48 had ratings of 1.2 and Share of 4 for ABC viewing, and a rating of 1.1 and Share of 4 for the FOX viewing (as seen below).

If you were an advertiser that wanted to reach the male audience, finding the demographic that you wanted to reach along with the ratings and shares of individual programs would be your first step into reaching them.  ESPN illustrates that TV programs such as college football attract and audience that is 94% male and 66% inbetween theage of 18 and 34 .  This information, along with the ratings and shares found above are a goldmine for advertisers for companies like Men's apparel stores, Truck companies, alcohol distributors and other companies geared toward men.  

To get to your consumer, you must understand and be able to analyze information about TV audiences.  This enables you to cut down costs and get directly to your consumer.  With this information, both consumers are receiving what they are interested in and advertisers are taking that opportunity and running with it.    

In today's world, TV can not be the only source of entertainment at the same time.  Now, 52% of men and women use their phones as other sources of entertainment while watching TV. Multi tasking has become the new normal when watching TV.  With 81% of people aged 18 to 24 using their cell phones while watching TV, our worlds are contently being updated by texts, Facebook messages, twitter posts, news, all while watching a program on TV.  Advertisers should take a more serious look at this trend as it will probably rise in the next couple of years to where over 75% of the whole population will be multi tasking between screens when watching TV.  

Digital Rights Management's Ability to Control

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the ability for publishers, copyright owners and individuals with rights to digital content to limit what individuals can do with their media after purchase.  This ability affects the computer game, e-book, film and music industry the most.  An example of this is when you rent a movie off iTunes.  Once you watch it once, you can no longer view the movie unless you purchase it or rent it again.  DRM is thought to be necessary by artists and publishers because it enables them to fight digital piracy and protect their content from being misused. 

DRM Functions and Abilities

DRM can be any type of technology that puts some type of control over the media that is sold by its producer and rights holder.  They have the ability to put restrictions on their product that limit the ability of what the consumer can do with their product.  Anything from not being able to copy a DVD that you bought onto an Ipod, to not being able to read an e-book you bought on Amazon on another application counts as DRM.  These restrictions protect the producers of the digital content from having their material taken advantage of. 

DRM is Agitating for Consumers

DRM for the most part is a hassle for consumers, preventing many legal functions of digital property such as backing up CD’s on your own personal computer. These agitations have lead to many campaigns against DRM such as Defective by Design.  For me personally, on iTunes, I have had my 5 allowed devices used up on my iTunes account.  This makes it impossible to put my already purchased songs on my new iPhone which is driving me nuts!  If one account can only be allowed on 5 devices, then it can only last so long.  People change phones, iPods, and other devices all the time! If I bought the song, I believe that I have the right to put it on all the devices that I am currently using.  DRM in many cases is seen as a way for corporations to keep steady revenue for their products which is true, but it just pushes consumers to download illegally to bypass the hassle of dealing with these controls.