Priceless?
"Reports aim to put a dollar figure on value of colleges" by Mary Carmichael | Globe Staff, July 07, 2012
How much is a college worth?
Phrased another way, for every dollar society puts into a school — either through direct government funding or by granting tax-exempt status — how much public benefit is realized?
Do they ask that about a war? A bank? A corporation?
Related:
Massachusetts' Lost Decade of Jobs
Those Are the (Tax) Breaks in Massachusetts
Filing a Boston Globe Tax Story
Massachusetts Lets Hollywood Roll Credits
I think those answer that question.
It is a deceptively simple question that has defied an easy answer.
PFFFFFFFFFTTT!!
But as tuitions rise and the economy drags, there is a newly keen desire, especially in a college town like Boston, to measure higher education’s overall return on investment.
See: Congress Saved Student Loans
Someone look$ like they are getting a pretty good return on your inve$tment, kiddo.
Two new reports give the task a try....
Also see: Romney's Report Card
Better return.
The report focusing on the University of Massachusetts system finds that for every dollar invested, the community — in this case, the state — ultimately gets about two back in the form of job creation, facilities for public use, and other benefits.
A better return than Hollywood.
Both reports were born out of a concern that there were too few firm numbers backing up the near-universal belief that higher education is good for society at large.
What an unbelievable piece of elitist s***.
Just head straight down the the Army registration office, kids.
Educators caution that even reports like the new ones do not tell the full story about the role of colleges and universities.
“These analyses usually fail to account for the original purpose of higher education: to create educated citizens for a democracy, in addition to social and economic mobility,” said Lawrence Bacow, the former Tufts University president who is now a scholar at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. “And there’s a tendency to look only at things that are easy to measure.”
Then the schools have monumentally failed.
But calls for such studies will continue as the economy continues to lag, said Richard Vedder, an Ohio economist who has used similar analyses to start a national discussion on whether private universities should be tax-exempt.
“People used to just buy into the notion that higher ed has positive spillover effects,” Vedder said. “But now they’re saying: ‘Show me. Tell me what the effects are.’ ”
Attempts to quantify the value of higher education gained credence about a decade ago, when cities began to lean more heavily on their nonprofit institutions for money. In Boston, that took the form of Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s voluntary program of payments in lieu of property taxes, launched in 2009.
Related: Boston at Thy Lord's Whim
Also see: Sunday Globe Special: Corporate Charity Takes Care of City
As part of the so-called PILOT arrangement, schools had to estimate in dollars how much good they were providing to local communities....
Do they ask that of a bank?
And they aren't making much of a fuss about the wars costing us money, are they?
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