“Pushing students into community colleges for the first two years of college is often touted as a major way to reduce education costs,” writes Cost of College. However, community colleges “really aren’t that cheap,” according to Oklahoma State Professor Vance Fried’s Opportunities for Efficiency and Innovation: A Primer on How to Cut College Costs.
Average community college budget per student
Compared to public regional four-year institutions, community colleges lower costs by spending very little on research and public service and providing fewer student services.
Instruction costs are slightly lower, but community colleges are only providing lower division courses whereas the public regional also provides more expensive upper division and master’s level courses. In fact, instruction costs for lower division students may be higher at the community college than at the public regional college or the public research university.
The average community college spends $10,985 per student, compared to $14,703 for the average public regional college. Fried designed two low-cost, high-value four-year college models that cost $6,705 and $9,204 per student. Of course, these are hypothetical colleges, Cost of College points out.
Master’s-level four-year universities spend less on lower-division students than community colleges, concludes a Cornell Higher Education Research Institute study (pdf) by Richard M. Romano of Broome Community College and Yenni M. Djajalaksana of the University of South Florida.
Community colleges enroll many students who need remedial education, usually offered in small classes, while first- and second-year university students often are in large lecture classes. Costs go up sharply for upper-division students, who are in smaller classes.
Rick Hess has more on Vance Fried’s cost-cutting ideas on Ed Week.
Fried is able to sketch a greenfield, high-quality college with a per pupil annual cost of $6,700 — compared to $25,900 for a public research institution or $51,500 for a private research institution. When compared to similarly-sized traditional research institutions, the per pupil cost is one-fifth that of privates and just over one-third that of publics. Fried even takes on community colleges, suggesting that they are still 20 percent more expensive per pupil than Fried’s four-year construct. Fried takes on online learning, too, suggesting that the projected savings only materialize when the alternative is small classes, while larger classes in traditional institutions price out similarly to online alternatives.
Fried wants states to create new colleges that could pilot cost-cutting ideas, while cutting subsidies for established colleges. Venture philanthropy should invest in low-price, high-quality college models.
