Thanks to internet that circulates informations about scholarships widely, more Indonesians are studying abroad nowadays, many are going to the United States. It is no wonder if young Indonesian parents who received their Master’s or Ph.D from the United States would also love to send their kids to study in the United States. However, if you are like me, a regular Indonesian citizen who is not coming from a “Crazy Rich Asian” family, there is one essential question, how much should we pay? Is the cost reasonable? And how do they spend our money?
Apparently, American school tuition does not only seem expensive for foreigners like us, but also for the U.S. citizens. However, unlike in Indonesia where people traditionally only borrow money to pay for housing, cars or to start business, in the U.S. it is normal for people to get a loan to pay their school. In the United States, a college degree charm is irresistible. Many people who cannot afford the cost to earn a degree are willing to get student loans. This condition has made the demand for college degree increases. Higher education institutions, perceive this increase as the growing of purchasing power which justifies them to increase tuition. This leads to a vicious inflation cycle.
How much is the average undergraduate tuition today? Katty Kay, a presenter from BBC World News, in her article “Is an American University Degree Worth the Cost?”, states that American higher education is the most expensive in the world, exceeding $50,000 per year just for tuition. According to Kay, to pay all the costs, many students work part-time to make their end meets. According to Allie Bidwell in “College Grads Question How Much a Degree is Worth,” by 2013, more than a half of the roughly $ 1 trillion in the U.S. student loan debt was not being repaid.
Although there are clear evidence that college tuition and fees are too expensive and too many people cannot pay their student debts, American colleges do not seem to care to provide immediate response to this problem. Surprisingly, nor does the students. The unrealistic cost of higher education has always been seen as normal by majority of Americans.
There are a few movements protesting government and colleges for letting pursuing a college degree has become unreasonable, such as the “Million Student March” in 2015 (USA Today, 2015). The most recent movement against tuition fee is teachers strike in Chicago. One of their demands was about student loan debt t o get teachers’ certificate from liberal arts college (Novak, 2019). There was no more significant protests following up these actions. Still, people do not seem resisting the trend in the raise of college tuition and fee is necessary.
The irresistibility of American higher education
Although American higher education is known as the most expensive in the world, the number of students who enroll to their colleges keep on raising. Not only for the big-shot high-ranked and second-tier universities, but also for the less renowned for-profit institution that are usually costlier than their traditional counter parts. Martin Smith from PBS when reporting for Frontline episode “College Inc.” finds that traditional higher education institution are still not enough to cover everybody who wants to go to school. Thus, people are looking at for-profit institution for the solution, despite the fact that these school are often more expensive then traditional schools.
What makes American school irresistible? I argue that American society, including colleges, is driven by, and crazy about, the “customer service culture.” When I presented this argument in my class, my classmates and professor are bamboozled with the relationship between “customer service culture” and higher education institution. They might be confused, but to me it is apparent that the American higher education institution are also thrive on “customer service culture” for two reasons. First, American “customer service culture”, is not only about”being nice to customers” but also, and more importantly, “being the best in as much aspects as they could to impress the customer.” Second, I also argue that, since higher education was set up for the elites, therefore, from the beginning American higher education institution provided service and facilities that fulfill the lifestyle of these group of people.
I can see the similarity between higher education institution and the store that I am working at. I am currently working at an upscale American grocery store which not only urge the employees to always find a way to say “yes!’ and to go “above and beyond” when fulfilling customers need, but also promises to be the healthiest grocery store in the country, selling only the highest quality produce, conduct fair trading, being the nicest to earth, made the list of the best place to work on Fortune 500, etc. Customer who shops at the grocery store are residents of Chicago north-suburb that is looking for qualities mention above. By shopping at this store, customer feel glad about themselves.
Let see how this customer service culture applied at school. During the time when I was an Indonesian college student, my friends and I were often in a bad mood because we were not able to meet with our professor to ask for signature on our thesis or to ask for feedback on our work. There are probably two reasons that cause this, first is Indonesian culture that is not egalitarian, second is the fact that Indonesian professor often do not have assigned office hours. Therefore, students are betting on their luck to have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with professors.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the very basic service that you can always count on as a student are, first, that you can meet one-on-one with your professors on their assigned office hours and, second, you receive generous feedback on your work. Gym facilities, sport facilities, library and access to journal are also count as ‘basic’ necessity at American school. Moreover, just like at the grocery store company where I am working, in the institutional level, these school are thriving to be the best to please their students and they are not hesitated to spend money for this obsession.
One example on using impression to attract more students is the effort by top institutions to be on the list of high-ranked universities. When talking about the cause of expensive tuition in top universities, Ronald Ehrenberg on “Tuition Rising: Why College Cost so Much”, introduces the reports on universities rank as one of the concept. He says that when top universities are being competitive on the list, they will be able to attract smarter, more affluent students. Further, just like how customers are feeling glad when they are shopping at a “good cause grocery store”, students that are enroll to this school will also feel proud about themselves because they are being part of such a great institution.
Correspondingly, to be the best at “customer service”, Archibald and Fieldman state in their article “Why Does College Cost so Much?” that American schools spend a lot of money to provide state-of-the art gadgets which are available in the industry. Recently I met with my friend Marson who is doing his Ph.D in Neuroscience at Iowa State University while he was in Chicago for Neuroscience Conference. He told me how his project would not be able to be done in Indonesia because there is no sufficient laboratory to facilitate his research. He mentioned that the quality of the microscope that he used in Indonesia was far below the microscope that he used here.
Unlike Marson’s microscope, unfortunately, American schools’ obsession in giving the best “customer service” to attract more students do not always be interpreted in the ideal way by some schools. Malcolm Gladwell in his podcast, Food Fight, tells a story about two elite liberal-arts private school, Bowdoin College and Vassar College. While Vassar College is using its money to giving out more need-based aid for their students with lower socioeconomic status, Bowdoin on the other hand, giving out unnecessary facility like a grandiose dining hall, including extravagant menu like “eggplant parmesan pancake” to invite more students. There is nothing we can do about school that want to spend their money on unnecessary improvement, which also contributing to the rise of tuition, however when choosing a school, Gladwell suggests, parents should consider to choose a school like Vassar College. By then, we will know that our money will be spent for the right purpose and our kids will experience more diversity at school.
To conclude this article, I would suggest parents who wants to send their kids to the United States to be as detailed as they can be. Philip Elliott in his article “Big Student Debt in Unexpected Places”, urges students to just “go for it” when applying to the big shot school like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Although they are very competitive, they also have billion of dollar of endowment money that they provide to help students to pay their tuition.
Along with the big-shot schools, apply for other second-tier school that offer merit-based and need-based aid for international students. Always remember to beware of the shady for-profit schools. When you are browsing for school, for-profit institution adds might appear in your computer. That is because they spend a quarter of their budget for advertisement (Smith, 2010). For-profit school might be easy to get into; they might look like they have high-end facility just like traditional institution, but in the end it will be five to six time more expensive than regular school. Not to mention, there are a lot of students who argues that their degree are not useful after they graduate from this kind of school (Smith, 2010).
To be our trustworthy go-to-guide, just as Ehrenberg suggest, the publication from U.S. News & World Report on universities ranking might be a good start when “shopping for school”. They not only provide the list of the ranking, but also how much endowment money every school have. You can look for your big-shots campuses, second-tier campuses. After that check with their website on the campus life. Do they spend their money wisely or for extravagant things? On their website, we can also look if the school give merit-based or need-based aid for international students.
Overall if we ended up have to spend a lot of money for our children’s higher education, why not take advantages from the “customer service culture”? Oh, and one more, the most crucial thing if we really want to send our kids to study in the United States: let’s start saving!
Works Cited Entry
Archiblad, B. Robert, David H. Feldman. “Why Does College Cost so Much?”. Forbes. 12 Aug. 2010, www.forbes.com.
Bidwell, Allie. “College Grads Question How Much a Degree is Worth”.US News. 10 Feb. 2015, www.usnews.com.
Elliott, Philip. “Big Student Debt in Unexpected Places”. Washington Examiner. 10 Sept. 2013. www.washingtonexaminer.com.
Ehrenberg, Ronald. “Tuition Rising: Why College Costs so Much.” https://d2l.oakton.edu/d2l/le/content/77451/fullscreen/1571234/View.
Glater, Jonathan, D. “College Cost Rising at Double the Inflation Rate”. The New York Times. 22October 2007. www.nytimes.com.
Gladwell, Malcolm. “Food Fight”. Revision History. www.revisionhistory.com.
Kay, Katty. “Is an American University Degree Worth the Cost?”. BBC. 11 Feb. 2015, www.bbc.com.
Smith, Martin. “Frontline: College Inc”. PBS. 4 May 2010. http://www.pbs.org.
“Million Student March Protests Student Debt Tuition Rates”. USA Today. 12 Nov.2015. http://www.usatoday.com.
Novak, Jake. “Chicago Teachers Strike Highlights Americas Top 3 Economic Threats”. CNBC. 18 Oct. 2019. http://www.cnbc.com.
Mama Rumahan 