Private Universities Spend Twice as Much as Publics on Teaching

Bloomberg reports:

Private research universities spent twice as much as their public counterparts to teach each student in the 2007-2008 school year, widening a cost gap that can make private colleges unaffordable to students without financial aid.

The private institutions, on average, laid out $19,520 for each student for instruction that year, a 22 percent increase from a decade earlier, the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity & Accountability, a Washington- based nonprofit research group, said today. Public universities spent $9,732 for each student, up 10 percent in the decade, according to the report.

The spending rate in 2008 “may turn out to be a high point in funding for higher education,” the Delta Project said in its report. The recession that began in December 2007 forced colleges to cut budgets