Cost of College Tuition

Cost of College Tuition

Here is a breakdown of "marginal" costs for college level students. By "marginal" costs, I mean the amount that each student should be expected to provide to cover the salary of the teachers and professors.

A Student needs 120 credits to graduate. He usually takes 5 courses of 3 credits each per semester, and so needs 8 sememsters or four years to complete the course to graduate.

Instructors' salaries are as follows (approximately)
Instructor's salary (tenured) $60,000 per year
Instructor's salary (adjunct) $30,000 per year

I will assume that each instructor (tenured) will teach five courses per semester, or 10 courses per year, and the average number of students in each course is 25.

The cost of teaching for each academic course (of three units) is one tenth of the instructor's annual salary. This is $6,000 per course.

Each student's portion of the course is one twenty-fifth of this, or $240.

The five courses that the student needs per semester is five time 240, or $1,200.

Over eight semesters, this would be 8 times $1,200, or $9,600.

I believe that students should be obligated to support their teachers, and thus a four-year college degree should cost around $10,000. I also think that fixed costs, such as buildings, administration, and other non-teaching related costs should be carried by alumni, donors, and government. Students should not be expected to pay for buildings!

My evaluation applies only to courses of academics only, such as history, philosophy, math, and so on. Courses that require laboratories or other added expenses would cost extra, certainly.

However, with state university tuitions reaching over $8,000 per semester and private colleges costing over $40,000, one can see that the students are highly overcharged for the education.

In other words, the teaching cost is very low, compared to the tuition!!!!