2012年12月31日 星期一

Building a Showcase Campus, Using an I.O.U.

教育

為打造體面校園,美國高校大肆舉債

John Freidah for The New York Times
哈佛大學為了維持其在學術領域的頂尖地位,已經花費了數十億美元,其中一項大工程就是擴建Allston分校區。

有些人將之稱為“大廈情結”(Edifice Complex),還有的人將其稱為“多多益善法則”(Law of More)或“泰姬陵綜合症”(Taj Mahal syndrome)。
數十年來,在修建教學樓、宿舍和休閑實施的巨額花費——為吸引學生,有些學校在建造方面極度鋪張——讓各大學院和大學債台高築。而往往學生們卻成了買單的對象。
信譽評級機構穆迪(Moody's)為《紐約時報》彙編的數據顯示,在調整了通脹的情況下,2000至2011年期間,500多所高校的總體負債水平增加了一倍多。與此同時,高校持有的現金數量、捐贈和投資占其債務的比重下降了40多個百分點。
隨着各類高校收入的減少,金融專家和大學官員敲響了花費和借貸後果的警鐘。上個月,哈佛大學(Harvard University)管理者對大學和高校“迅速而又令人困惑的變化”發出了警告。
哈佛大學在截至6月的2012財年報告的序言中異常嚴肅地指出,“學校的抱負在不斷增長,而學校發掘新財務資源、實現這些抱負的能力出現了脫節,因此,高等教育體制明確需要進行變革。”
那些為上大學借貸了幾萬美元並苦苦掙扎償債的學生和畢業生成為了債務議論的焦點。償還助學貸款的學生當中,有近六分之一都在拖欠債務。
但是有些高校也在大量舉債,將錢花在大規模擴張和設施修建方面,並藉此吸引更好的生源:擁有電影院和紅酒吧台的學生會;帶有室內登山牆和“環流河” 的健身房;提供單間和獨立衛浴的寢室。研究顯示,教學花費的上升幅度則要緩慢得多。結果,學校通過向學生們徵收更高的學費、食宿費和專項費用來支付部分, 即便不是大部分學校的債務,而在某些情況下,這些債務則由州納稅人來承擔。
在整個高校領域——公立的、私立的,知名的、不知名的——債務規模一直都在膨脹。穆迪彙編的數據顯示,儘管哈佛大學是美國資金最充裕的大學,它也有60億美元的債務,其債務規模在所有的私立大學中位居榜首。
茱莉亞音樂學院(Juilliard School)於幾年前完成了一次重大翻修,該校債務從2002年的600萬美元(考慮通脹因素)上升至去年的1.95億美元。穆迪的數據顯示,位於俄亥 俄州的公立大學邁阿密大學(Miami University)正在翻修寢室和學生會,該校債務從2002年的6600萬美元升至2011年的3.26億美元;紐約大學(New York University)一直在進行雄心勃勃的擴張,其債務從2002年的12億美元升至2011年的28億美元。
這筆債務——穆迪統計2011年高校未償債務總計2050億美元——是高校日益迷茫之時的產物。在經歷了數年的強勁增長之後,很多學校的招生規模正 趨平或出現下降,尤其在美國東北和中西部地區。隨着學生未償債務規模達到1萬億美元,學生和家長們開始質疑高校的成本和價值。而且在線課程對傳統的大學教 育體驗和付費模式已構成顛覆性威脅。
與此同時,金融危機和經濟衰退又帶來了一個全新的、時而令人痛心的財務桎梏。傳統收入來源例如學費、州政府撥款和捐贈不斷受到壓縮,而勞動力成本、僱員醫保、技術成本和債務利率則在普遍上漲。
學生們對助學金的需求越來越大,很多人認為,除了那些財大氣粗的高校之外,其他高校都難以應付這一趨勢。
穆迪高等教育和醫保實務執行董事約翰·內爾森(John C. Nelson)表示,“過去5年中,評級降級的學校要遠遠超過評級升級的學校,學校等級將被稀釋。”他對除了頂級州立大學和私立大學之外的所有高校都持負面展望。
目前,財務狀況最差的高校僅限於那些獨立的職業學校和依靠學費運轉的小型私立學院。例如,3月穆迪的評級報告顯示,6300萬美元的債務讓美國聖瑪 麗山大學(Mount St. Mary’s University)這所馬里蘭州的小型羅馬天主教學院的財務資源捉襟見肘,同時也讓該校的評級成為了垃圾級。
該校校長托馬斯·鮑威爾(Thomas H. Powell)表示,“我們借了很多錢,但是我們別無選擇。我不會坐視大樓倒塌不管。”儘管背負着垃圾級的信譽評級,托馬斯仍堅持認為學校已重新站穩了腳跟,並無需進行額外借貸。
基本上沒有人會預測高校會擁有與借貸學生和畢業生一樣的債務拖欠率,至少這一情況不會在近期發生。金融分析師表示,對於大多數高校來說,儘管用於償還債務本金和利息的整體花費有所增加,但其經費預算仍可以應付這一開銷,部分原因是因為借貸利率創歷史新低。
然而,更高的債務償還以及其他花費致使高校成本成了一匹脫韁的野馬,而這對學生的影響是實實在在的,往往也是巨大的。校園裡新的財務狀況為校方帶來了需求衝突:是降低學費,還是繼續花錢打造更具吸引力的校園?
穆迪的數據顯示,儘管金融危機使工程建設偃旗息鼓,但是借貸的步伐卻沒有停止。俄亥俄大學(Ohio University)經濟學教授兼大學負擔和生產率中心(Center for College Affordability)主任理乍得·韋德(Richard K. Vedder)說,“高校的行為跟希臘人一樣不負責任。”作為案例,他列舉了自己的僱主俄亥俄大學。該校已提議在未來20年於建設項目中投入26億美元,其中一半將來自於舉債——校方說這一花費對於陳舊校舍的升級來說是必要的。
韋德博士在一封郵件中提到,“高校里流行的大廈情節與那些需要進行資本支出控制的其他趨勢大相徑庭。”
多多益善法則
於1969年成立的公立大學新澤西瑞曼波學院(Ramapo College of New Jersey)一直以來夢想着成為紐約地區頂尖的公立文理學院。
但是擺在眼前的一大難題在於,新澤西州在過去20年中基本沒有為州立學院和大學重要工程項目提供過資金。
因此,該學院開始舉債,隨後又借了更多錢,修建了新的商學院、宿舍樓和一整套休閑設施,其中包括2200個座位的體育館。一棟為護理專業準備的側樓正在修建當中。
瑞曼波學院現在的債務達到了2.81億美元,債務償還支出占其預算的13%,這一比例比穆迪數據中的大多數高校都要高。
儘管瑞曼波債務償還支出占預算比例是少見的,但是借貸的做法卻是普遍的。
由於面臨爭奪優秀生源和更佳排名的激烈競爭,在過去這10年,美國各個高校管理者效仿了從影視作品中借過來的一個相對簡單的策略:只要肯建,就不愁沒有學生來。
麥格勞希爾建築信息(McGraw-Hill Construction)的調查顯示,2008年美國大學校園在建面積為3260萬平方英尺(約303萬平方米),創20年以來的歷史新高,而1990 年的在建面積為1210萬平方英尺(約112萬平方米)。麥格勞希爾官員說,金融危機之後建築面積有所下降但目前正有所抬頭。
建築經費通常是借來的。2011年,穆迪所評比的224所公立大學的未償債務增加到了1220億美元,而2000年為530億美元(考慮通脹因 素);281所私立大學的未償債務則於2011年升至830億美元,而2000年為400億美元。金融危機之後,一些高校寧願通過借錢而不是使用其捐贈來 支付開銷,但是大部分借貸都是用於基本工程項目。
自2000年以來,公立大學的本、息支付金額上升了67%,在2011年達到93億美元,而私立大學則上升了62%,去年達到了50億美元。穆迪的 內爾森表示,出現這一結果的原因不僅僅在於借貸,而且還在於近年來債務利率開始從浮動利率向固定利率調整,雖然這一做法會增加利息成本,但卻更穩定。
據貝恩諮詢(Bain & Company)和私募股權公司斯特靈合夥公司(Sterling Partners)7月公布的調查顯示,非營利性院校的長期債務在2002~2008年期間增長了12%,而利息成本增長了9%。
對比發現,教育成本同期上漲了5%。貝恩諮詢在報告中估計,三分之一院校的財務狀況要比他們幾年之前的狀況要差。
貝恩諮詢在報告中指出,“高等教育所面臨的流動性危機大部分拜‘多多益善法則’所賜。很多高校在運營中所抱有的想法是,修得越多,花得越多,多元化程度越高,擴張得越大,學校就能經營得更加持久,變得更加繁榮。然而,相反的情況出現了:高校因此而負債纍纍。”
辛辛那提大學(University of Cincinnati)校方則認為,並不是所有的舉債行為,包括令人咋舌的大額借貸,就必然是不好的。該校的債務達到了11億美元。
主管學生事務的副校長米切爾·利文斯頓(Mitchel D. Livingston)表示,“我們為學校帶來的變化讓學校受益無窮。”他注意到,招生量增加了,學生的素質進步了,而且“校園的生活質量也提高了。”
他說,“我們從次選學校成為了首選學校。”
去年辭職的佛蒙特大學(University of Vermont)校長丹尼爾·福格爾(Daniel M. Fogel)表示,由於缺乏州府支持,很多公立學院和大學不得不借錢來度日。他說,當他於2002年來到這所大學時,一些實驗室的條件還趕不上很多高中實驗室。
他說,“你如何利用如此低端的教學設施來吸引他人?在很多情況下,學校大興土木並不是為了錦上添花。”
其他學校同樣支持借貸。紐約大學發言人約翰·貝克曼(John Beckman)表示,該校近9億美元的債務被花在了附屬醫院上面,因此對學生沒有影響。他說,紐約大學的收入在過去十年中翻了一番,因此儘管債務有所增加,但是本、息支付開支相對於總預算的比例仍較為穩定。
茱莉亞音樂學院發言人表示,翻修是為了升級和增加設施,而且籌款活動將幫助負擔部分成本。
買單
邁阿密大學負責財務和商業服務的副校長大衛·克萊默(David K. Creamer)表示,學校排名的重要性迫使校方不斷地增加開支。在一些評選中,花錢的效果是最為直接的,因為人們會評選出“最佳寢室”大學或“最佳運動 設施”大學。克萊默說,對其他評選的效果是間接的:更好的設施會吸引更好的生源,從而最終提升學校的級別。
他說,“沒有標準表明,如果學校變得更為高效,學校的排名就會得到提升。學校的排名還有可能會因此而下降。”
邁阿密大學借錢來翻修其陳舊的宿舍和學生會,但是克萊默警告說,大學不能靠無休止地花錢來成為頂級大學。他說,“這不是一個可持續的方法。”邁阿密大學的債務今年上升至4.44億美元,較去年上升了36%。
其中一個問題在於,開支會導致高校學費過高。在一些州,包括紐約州、加州和康涅狄格州,公立學院和大學的借貸大部分是由納稅人買單,因此學生們與學校還債沒有直接的關係。但是在大部分高校,大興土木和高築的債台推高了學費和學生債務,這一點是毫無疑問的。
但是成本往往很難單列出來。
也有一些例外,有些大學用一般收入來支付利息和本金,這些收入包括學費、食宿、捐贈回報和州府撥款。在一些以學費作為其主要收入來源的小型學院,學生為學校擔負的償債任務更重。(相反,在擁有多種收入渠道、資金充裕的大學,學生幾乎無需替學校還債。)
一些公立大學的債務是通過學校的專項收費來償還的,這種收費需經過學生的同意。對於諸如新學生會會館和休閑設施以及在其他情況下,高校會追加針對基建項目和維護的專項收費。
在新澤西瑞曼波學院,校方於2009年增加了一項基本資產改良費,目前是每年1000美元,用於支付維修費用。其他位於新澤西的公立學院已在對學生徵收類似的費用。
新澤西本州居民在瑞曼波學院上學住校要花費大概24500美元(不包括教材費和個人開支),較10年前上漲了30%。
瑞曼波學院校長皮特·莫瑟(Peter P. Mercer)說債務無疑增添了學生的學費成本。但是他說,由於缺乏州府資助和其他的財務資源,學院沒有多少迴旋的餘地。因為學院目前僅有43年的歷史,因此捐贈的數目和校友支持相對較少。
莫瑟說,“如果瑞曼波學院要滿足學生的訴求,即更多、更全面的教學計劃和居住空間,那麼我們將不得不從外界借貸。”
縮減比例
哈佛可能無需通過大肆花錢來吸引生源。但它已花費了數百億美元,目的是維持、甚至是支撐其在學術領域的頂尖地位。
在金融危機到來之前的6年時間裡,由於有穩健的捐贈回報和債務作為資助,哈佛大學新招收了200名教職人員(增加了10%),並新修了總面積為400萬平方英尺的建築(增加了20%)。在此期間,學校向學生髮放的助學金增加了80%。
受金融危機和經濟衰退影響,學校被迫做出快速調整。為學校提供近三分之一運營預算的捐贈年度回報在2009財年出現了27%的負增長,損失了110 億美元。哈佛並沒有以低價變賣其資產,而是借了15億美元。2008財年至2011財年,學校的利息開支翻了一番多,達到了近3億美元。
哈佛校方在11月份發佈的年度報告中稱,“金融危機就像潮汐一樣,隨着它的退去,學校的一些弱點被更清晰地暴露了出來。”
這股潮汐衝擊了一大批高校。美國各大高校的校長被迫以全新的視角來審視開支和債務。
在費城私立高校德雷塞爾大學(Drexel University),由2009年去世的前任校長康士坦丁·帕帕達吉斯(Constantine Papadakis)所發起的一項雄心勃勃的擴張計劃將17年前這所擁有9000名學生、瀕臨倒閉的學校變成了目前擁有2.1萬名學生的現代化學校。該校 已被列入《美國新聞與世界報道》(U.S. News and World Report)“後起之秀”學校名單當中。但是變化是有代價的:4.67億美元的債務,而且其凈學費也是全美高校最高的學費之一。
帕帕達吉斯的繼任者、校長約翰·弗萊(John A. Fry)打算將這一計劃進行下去,但他不會在近期追加借貸。
然而,他更希望“使用他人的資金”來擴張校園,即將大學土地出租給私人開發項目。開發商已經在大學地界上修建了一棟宿舍,而且計劃再修一棟。弗萊去 年同意與費城自然科學院(Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences)合并,並藉此助力博物館和該校自然科學系的發展。
弗萊說,“我認為靠老辦法是行不通的。我覺得公眾對此已經感到厭倦了。”
在俄亥俄州立大學,校長戈登·吉(E. Gordon Gee)宣布,這一如同修建“泰姬陵”般大肆修建宿舍和校園建築的時代已經終結。
吉說,“沒有人比我更願意去大興土木。現實是,這讓學校陷入了困境。”他於2007年接手俄亥俄州立大學,成為了公立高校薪酬最高的校長。自那之後,該校的債務上升了近70%,達到了20億美元。
在瑞曼波學院,莫瑟校長表示,他打算集中精力推廣學校的學術聲譽,而不是修建新校舍。他說,學生似乎對“花哨的東西”不那麼感興趣了,而且學校的成本——以及潛在的債務——已經成為了痛心疾首的問題。
他說,“我覺得這一態度有所轉變。五年前,可能有人會問我學生們是否得共用衛生間。現在,人們問我學校的商學院是否已經得到了官方認可。”
本文最初發表於2012年12月14日。
翻譯:Charlie




Degrees of Debt

Building a Showcase Campus, Using an I.O.U.

Some call it the Edifice Complex. Others have named it the Law of More, or the Taj Mahal syndrome.
A decade-long spending binge to build academic buildings, dormitories and recreational facilities — some of them inordinately lavish to attract students — has left colleges and universities saddled with large amounts of debt. Oftentimes, students are stuck picking up the bill.

Overall debt levels more than doubled from 2000 to 2011 at the more than 500 institutions rated by Moody’s, according to inflation-adjusted data compiled for The New York Times by the credit rating agency. In the same time, the amount of cash, pledged gifts and investments that colleges maintain declined more than 40 percent relative to the amount they owe.With revenue pinched at institutions big and small, financial experts and college officials are sounding alarms about the consequences of the spending and borrowing. Last month, Harvard University officials warned of “rapid, disorienting change” at colleges and universities.
“The need for change in higher education is clear given the emerging disconnect between ever-increasing aspirations and universities’ ability to generate the new resources to finance them,” said an unusually sobering introduction to Harvard’s annual report for the fiscal year ended in June.
The debate about indebtedness has focused on students and graduates who have borrowed tens of thousands of dollars and are struggling to keep up with their payments. Nearly one in every six borrowers with a student loan balance is in default.
But some colleges and universities have also borrowed heavily, spending money on vast expansions and amenities aimed at luring better students: student unions with movie theaters and wine bars; workout facilities with climbing walls and “lazy rivers”; and dormitories with single rooms and private baths. Spending on instruction has grown at a much slower pace, studies have shown. Students end up covering some, if not most, of the debt payments in the form of higher tuition, room and board and special assessments, while in some instances state taxpayers pick up the costs.
Debt has ballooned at colleges across the board — public and private, elite and obscure. While Harvard is the wealthiest university in the country, it also has $6 billion in debt, the most of any private college, the data compiled by Moody’s shows.
At the Juilliard School, which completed a major renovation a few years ago, debt climbed to $195 million last year, from $6 million in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2002. At Miami University, a public institution in Ohio that is overhauling its dormitories and student union, debt rose to $326 million in 2011, from $66 million in 2002, and at New York University, which has embarked on an ambitious expansion, debt was $2.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.2 billion in 2002, according to the Moody’s data.
The pile of debt — $205 billion outstanding in 2011 at the colleges rated by Moody’s — comes at a time of increasing uncertainty in academia. After years of robust growth, enrollment is flat or declining at many institutions, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. With outstanding student debt exceeding $1 trillion, students and their parents are questioning the cost and value of college. And online courses threaten to upend the traditional collegiate experience and payment model.
At the same time, the financial crisis and recession created a new and sometimes harrowing financial calculus. Traditional sources of revenue like tuition, state appropriations and endowment returns continue to be squeezed, even as the costs of labor, health care for employees, technology and interest on debt have generally increased.
Students are requiring more and more financial aid, a trend that many believe is unsustainable for all but the wealthiest institutions.
“We’ve had a lot more downgrades than upgrades in the last five years,” said John C. Nelson, managing director of the higher education and health care practice at Moody’s, which has a negative outlook on all but the top state universities and private schools. “There is going to be a thinning out of the ranks.”
For now, the worst financial struggles are confined to stand-alone professional schools and small, tuition-dependent private colleges. For instance, $63 million in debt has left Mount St. Mary’s University, a small Roman Catholic college in Maryland, with thin financial resources and junk-rated credit, according to a Moody’s rating in March.
“We borrowed a lot of money, but we had no choice,” said Thomas H. Powell, the university’s president, who maintains, despite the credit rating, that it has regained its footing and has no need for additional debt. “I wasn’t going to watch the buildings fall down.”
Almost no one is predicting colleges will experience default rates on par with those of indebted students and graduates, at least not anytime soon. While payments on debt principal and interest have increased over all, they remain a manageable piece of the expense pie for most institutions, partly because of historically low interest rates, financial analysts said.
Still, higher debt payments and other expenses have contributed to the runaway inflation of college costs, and the impact on students is real and often substantial. New financial realities on campuses are imposing conflicting demands on college administrators: do they make their institution more affordable, or continue to spend money to make their campus more attractive?
Despite a lull in construction after the financial crisis, borrowing has continued to grow, Moody’s data shows. “Schools are behaving like the Greeks, irresponsibly,” said Richard K. Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. As an example, he cited his own employer, Ohio University, which has proposed spending $2.6 billion on construction projects in the next 20 years, half of it paid for by debt — an undertaking university officials said was necessary to update antiquated buildings.
“The Edifice Complex pervading higher education flies in the face of other trends that call for caution in capital spending,” Dr. Vedder said in an e-mail.
The Law of More
Administrators at Ramapo College of New Jersey, a public institution founded in 1969, have harbored a dream of making it the premier public liberal arts college in the New York metropolitan area.
But one big obstacle has been the state of New Jersey, which has provided little money for capital projects on state colleges and universities in the last two decades.
So Ramapo borrowed, and it borrowed some more, building a new business school, dormitories and a recreational facility that includes a 2,200-seat arena. A new wing that will house the nursing program is under construction.
Ramapo now has $281 million in debt, and its debt payments account for 13 percent of its budget, high compared with most colleges rated by Moody’s.
While the proportion of debt payments to budget at Ramapo is unusual, its story is not.
Amid increasingly intense competition for better students and higher rankings, college administrators across the country during the last decade have deployed a relatively simple strategy borrowed from the movies: if you build it, they will come.
Construction starts on college campuses were 32.6 million square feet in 2008, the highest in two decades and up from 12.1 million square feet in 1990, according to a 2010 study by McGraw-Hill Construction. Construction declined after the financial crisis but is beginning to recover, McGraw-Hill officials said.
The building was often done with borrowed money. Outstanding debt at the 224 public universities rated by Moody’s grew to $122 billion in 2011, from $53 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2000. At the 281 private universities rated by Moody’s, debt increased to $83 billion, from $40 billion, in that period. Rather than deplete their endowments, some colleges borrowed to help pay bills after the financial crisis, but most borrowing was for capital projects.
Since 2000, the amount paid in interest and principal has increased 67 percent at public institutions, to $9.3 billion in 2011, and it increased 62 percent at private ones, to $5 billion last year. Mr. Nelson at Moody’s said the increase was a result not only of increased borrowing but also, in recent years, of a shift from variable- to fixed-rate debt, which typically increases interest costs but is more stable.
A study released in July by Bain & Company and Sterling Partners, a private equity firm, found that long-term debt at the nation’s nonprofit colleges and universities grew 12 percent a year from 2002 to 2008, while interest costs increased 9 percent.
By comparison, the cost of instruction grew 5 percent in that time period. The Bain report estimates that a third of colleges and universities are financially weaker than they were a few years ago.
“Much of the liquidity crisis facing higher education comes from having succumbed to the ‘Law of More,’ ” the Bain report said. “Many institutions have operated on the assumption that the more they build, spend, diversify and expand, the more they will persist and prosper. But instead, the opposite has happened: institutions have become overleveraged.”
Not all borrowing, even an eye-popping amount, is necessarily bad if you are an administrator at the University of Cincinnati, a state university with $1.1 billion in debt.
“The institution has profited mightily from the changes that we have made,” said Mitchel D. Livingston, vice president for student affairs. He noted that enrollment had increased and that the quality of the student body had improved, as had the “quality of life experience on campus.”
“We have gone from a second-choice institution to a first-choice,” he said.
Daniel M. Fogel, who resigned last year as president of the University of Vermont, said that given the lack of state support, many public colleges and universities had to borrow money just to remain adequate. He said that when he arrived at the university in 2002, some of the laboratories were inferior to those at many high schools.
“How do you bring people to teaching facilities that are really subpar?” he said. “It’s not a matter of gilding the lily, in many cases.”
Other schools also stood by their borrowing. John Beckman, an N.Y.U. spokesman, said nearly $900 million of the university’s debt was for its hospital and therefore had no impact on students. He said that N.Y.U.’s revenue increased 100 percent in the last decade, so that while debt also increased, the proportion of interest and principal paid against the overall budget has remained relatively steady.
A Juilliard spokeswoman said that the renovations were needed to update and expand facilities, and that a fund-raising drive would help defray some of the costs.
Picking Up the Bill
David K. Creamer, vice president for finance and business services at Miami University, said the importance of college rankings had pressured administrators to spend more and more. In some rankings, the effect of spending is direct because institutions with “the best dorms” or “the best athletic facilities” are singled out. The effect on other rankings is indirect: better facilities attract better students, and that ultimately raises rankings, Mr. Creamer said.
“There is nothing in there that says if you become more efficient, your ratings will go up. They will probably go down,” he said.
Miami borrowed money to renovate antiquated dorms and a student union, but Mr. Creamer warned that colleges cannot indefinitely spend their way to the top. “It’s not a sustainable approach,” he said. Miami’s debt increased this year to $444 million, a 36 percent increase from last year.
One problem is that the spending can make college prohibitively expensive. In some states, including New York, California and Connecticut, borrowing for public colleges and universities is mostly paid for by taxpayers, so students are not directly responsible for payments on the debt. But at most colleges, there is little question that construction and increased borrowing have contributed to escalating costs and student debt.
Often, though, the costs are not easy to isolate.
With some exceptions, interest and principal payments are paid with general revenue, which includes tuition, room and board, a portion of endowment returns and state appropriations. At smaller colleges that are dependent on tuition for most of their revenue, students shoulder a bigger burden of the debt. (Conversely, at wealthy universities with multiple revenue streams, students may pay very little of the debt.)
Some debt at public universities is paid by specific charges approved by students, for things like new student unions or recreational facilities, and in other instances, colleges have added a specific fee for construction projects and repairs.
At Ramapo College in New Jersey, administrators in 2009 added a capital improvement fee, now $1,000 a year, to pay for repairs. Other public colleges in New Jersey had already imposed similar fees on students.
It costs about $24,500 for New Jersey residents to attend Ramapo and live on campus (excluding books and personal expenses), roughly 30 percent more than a decade ago.
Ramapo’s president, Peter P. Mercer, said debt had definitely added to the costs for students. But he said Ramapo’s options were limited given the lack of state funding and other financial resources. Since the college is only 43 years old, it has a relatively small endowment and alumni support.
“If Ramapo College was going to respond to what students wanted, which was larger, more comprehensive programs and residential housing, then we were going to have to go out and borrow,” Mr. Mercer said.

Scaling Back
Harvard may not have to spend lavish sums of money to attract students. But it has spent billions anyway, to maintain and even bolster its position atop the academic heap.
In the six years leading up to the financial crisis, financed by robust endowment returns and debt, Harvard added 200 faculty members (a 10 percent increase) and more than four million gross square feet of buildings (a 20 percent increase). Its grant aid to students grew 80 percent in those years.

But the financial crisis and recession forced a sharp correction. The university’s endowment, whose annual returns provided roughly a third of the operating budget, suffered a 27 percent negative return in fiscal 2009, an $11 billion loss, and Harvard borrowed $1.5 billion to pay its bills rather than selling off assets at a sharp discount. Its interest expense more than doubled from fiscal 2008 to fiscal 2011, to nearly $300 million.

“The financial crisis has acted like a tidal wave that, as it receded, exposed certain vulnerabilities with a new clarity,” Harvard officials said in the November annual report.
That tidal wave struck a broad swath of higher education, forcing university presidents across the country to look at spending, and debt, in a new light.

At Drexel University, a private college in Philadelphia, an ambitious expansion by a previous president, Constantine Papadakis, who died in 2009, transformed it from a 9,000-student university on the brink of bankruptcy 17 years ago to a modern campus with 21,000 students and a spot on U.S. News and World Report’s “up and coming” schools list. But the change has come with a price: $467 million in debt and a net price of attendance that is among the highest in the nation.

Mr. Papadakis’s successor as president, John A. Fry, plans to continue that expansion, but without taking on additional debt anytime soon.

Rather, he hopes to “use other people’s money” to expand the university by leasing Drexel’s land for privately developed projects. Already, developers are building one dormitory on Drexel property, and there are plans for another. Mr. Fry also agreed last year to a merger with Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences, as a way to bolster both the museum and Drexel’s natural sciences department.

“Holding on to the old ways, I don’t think that is going to work,” Mr. Fry said. “I think the public is tired of that.”

At the Ohio State University, President E. Gordon Gee declared the era of “Taj Mahal-like” dormitories and academic buildings over.

“There is no one who likes to build more than me,” said Mr. Gee, who took over at Ohio State in 2007 and is the highest paid president of any public college. Debt has grown roughly 70 percent since then, to $2 billion. “The reality is, that is what got us in trouble.”

At Ramapo, President Mercer said he planned to focus on marketing the college’s academic reputation, rather than its new buildings. Students, he said, seem less interested in “bells and whistles” now that the costs of college — and the potential debt — have become painfully clear.

“I think the attitude has changed,” he said. “Five years ago, I might have been asked if they had to share a bathroom. Now, I’m asked if my business school is accredited.”


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