ACTA’s one-of-a-kind higher education financial analysis tool, HowCollegesSpendMoney.com, makes it possible for institutions to evaluate their spending patterns and benchmark themselves against their peers.
For years, college costs have surged exponentially, and student debt has climbed to an all-time high. The fiscal model for private and public higher education is unsustainable, yet many institutions ramp up their tuition and administrative spending year after year. Helping higher education leaders and policymakers gain transparent access to data on college spending is paramount in confronting the national crisis.
ACTA’s HowCollegesSpendMoney.com is an innovative, free portal into a vast trove of information on spending at 1,500 public and private colleges and universities. Visitors can select specific colleges and instantly access eight years of their administrative and instructional spending patterns; compare them with other institutions in their peer groups; research student tuition, retention, and graduation rates; generate reports; and much more.
For over 10 years, ACTA has led calls for transparency and accountability in college spending, and has provided university boards with guidance to address rising costs. Our work extends from identifying best practices for measuring efficient building utilization to advice on academic program reviews. We analyze growth in administrative spending compared to instructional spending and help governing boards get a firm grasp on their institutional priorities.
For a view into how your college spends money, visit HowCollegesSpendMoney.com.
Student loan debt has become the fastest-growing segment of U.S. household debt. Students are often forced to make tough financial decisions in order to afford an undergraduate degree, and many struggle to find a good-paying job once they have graduated.
With recent research from the Institute for Higher Education Policy showing that college is unaffordable for as many as 70% of working- and middle-class students, concerns about college costs are mounting. The cost of operating an institution of higher education, with very few exceptions, is reflected in the price of attendance that students, their families, […]
ACTA’s report The Cost of Chaos in the Curriculum reveals that the vast array of course choices given to college students is a cause of exploding costs and poor academic outcomes. And a bloated undergraduate curriculum is particularly detrimental to the success of students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The report documents how at most colleges and […]
ACTA today released a report that finds the country’s leading public institutions fail students and the American people in several key areas. Getting What You Pay For? examines 52 top-rated institutions to separate reputation from results. The report finds that too many leading, publicly-funded institutions don’t provide students with high academic quality at a reasonable […]
WASHINGTON, D.C. – We know that college costs are increasing, but what’s harder to find out is where the money is going. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni on Wednesday launched a site that makes it easy to track how your hard-earned tuition dollars are spent: HowCollegesSpendMoney.com. It’s geared toward college trustees, lawmakers and policy wonks, […]
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) has launched a new web-based tool that makes it easier to track and compare college expenditures. It’s called HowCollegesSpendMoney, and it promises to be an invaluable, user-friendly, source of information that will allow higher education leaders, students and policymakers to evaluate and compare institutions’ performance on financial matters as […]
If you’re a current or prospective student, you probably have money on your mind. After all, student loan debt is burgeoning on $1.5 trillion. While there are many factors to consider when choosing which college to attend, the money necessary to go there is usually one of the biggest factors. According to a recent press release, […]
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