This post would be more interesting if you had some analysis. Its odd that you did so much legwork, without a single example of 'statistics'. Got something? Post up a counter-example. Or even just a regular example !
But again their primary sources are fine, they're just not being honest about what they say. You'd be best off just reading the data from the NCES, College Board, etc.
As a rule of thumb, conservative ideology is mostly based on theories that have no basis in reality, whereas liberal ideology is mostly based on facts that have no basis in reality. This is a good example of the latter.
But again their primary sources are fine, they're just not being honest about what they say
I only skimmed the article, but it seems like you are saying the data in the charts is OK but you don't like the text (?) If that's the case, why not make a more specific critique?
At its root, the thesis of the article seems to be there is a data-driven correlation with debt availability and COGS at universities. Notwithstanding the obvious similar correlation with Revenue.
I could check a regression, but the eyeball test looks pretty good. Personally, I thiked the author missed the mark. He should have run a correlation of student debt to university endowments.
That (time series) would be an even more interesting eye-opener.
Need I mention "stratify the data"? If your technically unclear, I can be more specific. For example, student debt issuances (flows), not retained balances. edit: just for fun
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2011 Endowment vs 1994 corrected for inflation. These are dollar variances. 100-->156 with inflation. If a school goes from 100 to 200, this would measure 46. Below data is the EXCESS in BILLIONs vs 1994. This is incremenatl wealth accumulation, the gross changes (typically 5x) are the second figure. Endowments are approximately at 3x wealthier following this massive inflow of cash, corrected for inflation.
1) Harvard University (MA) $22.6 up 516% raw
2) Yale University (CT) $13.9 up 548% raw
3) Princeton University (NJ) $12 up 505% raw
4) Stanford University (CA) $12.4 up 611% raw
5) Massachusetts Institute of Technology $7.1 up 571% raw
^ Its worth pointing out that these "Non-profits" show financial returns on capital far in excess of "profitable" companies. corrected for inflation, school's capital is out-performing GDP growth by ~600 basis points, over a sustained period (multi-cyclic, etc).
Endowments don't generally come from tuition, and are only partly spent on scholarships/resources for undergraduates, so I don't see what this would show us. Especially since only a tiny percentage of colleges have significant endowments.
You have an interesting lack of intellectual curiousity. Last time I checked, 37 college presidents were being paid over $1MM/year in salary. Where is that money coming from? Not the endowments? Your right. Its coming from students, who are basically laundering the government loans, into tuition to support operating costs of the colleges. Money is fungible, in that regards.
