When people pay more for a service or good, they expect to receive a higher quality item. But according to a recent report by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, MSU students are experiencing increasing costs disproportionate with the quality of the university.
The question becomes: What can MSU do to raise its value for students?
The report ranked the top 100 public universities with the best value in relation to cost and quality, ranking MSU 49 for in-state students and 61 for out-of-state students. MSU’s quality ranking went up, but the total cost went up even more, explaining the low value.
The study looked at factors such as student-faculty ratio, admission rate and yield, test scores of incoming freshmen and financial value to determine the rankings of the public universities.
MSU is ranked toward the bottom of the other Big Ten universities on the list in value, but public universities in other states are not experiencing the same financial burden that MSU is.
Although the University of Michigan ranked 16 for in-state students, endowment funds for the university were valued at $7.8 billion as of June 30 of last year.
In comparison, MSU only had $1.5 billion in endowments in 2010, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund Institute.
The endowment funds explain why, according to the Kiplinger study, the University of Michigan’s value decreased less significantly than MSU’s.
One way for MSU to help close that gap would be increased funding from the state of Michigan. State funding would be beneficial to all Michigan public universities, especially because none of them receive the same endowments the University of Michigan does.
MSU could focus more on the specific areas the study addressed while simultaneously increasing grants and scholarships to students. However, doing so might be difficult when taking into consideration the financial cuts to higher education that public universities in Michigan have experienced.
Nevertheless, MSU should prepare for the worst; the worst being no increases in higher education funding from the state for the 2012-13 school year. That way, the university will take any state funding as extra money instead of having to rely on state funding that might never come.
With or without state money, MSU has a responsibility to give students the highest quality education possible. With or without state money, MSU has to find a way to slow the rate of tuition increases. Doing this will help the university improve MSU’s value for students.
Despite MSU’s value for students decreasing. MSU still is a Big Ten university, and there is still value in an education here.
MSU still is building the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, has an art museum in the works and many other positive aspects to aid students’ education.
We know there are good things happening at MSU. By increasing the value of the university, MSU could prove that fact to the rest of the country.
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