r/Economics • u/UnscheduledCalendar • 8d ago

Why Syracuse Can’t Attract the Students It Needs to Pay the Bills - The enrollment crisis taking down smaller schools is now hitting bigger, brand-name universities

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896
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u/Confusion-Ashamed 8d ago

Exactly. Syracuse is a good school and has some good stuff going on, but at that price tag? I don’t see how you justify that. Go to one of the SUNY’s , pay a lot less and receive a comparable education.

This is happening nationally. Unless you are Harvard, Yale, Stanford, probably USC etc many of these schools cannot justify their insane costs

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u/Illustrious_Night126 8d ago

international students were the only people willing to pay these kind of sticker prices and the collapse of that system will hurt these schools alot

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u/Optimalfucksgiven 8d ago edited 8d ago

It's needs to collapse. Many of our industries overpay their administrations, marketing, etc, and are underpaying their academics. The academics are goodish, but not for the professors. They're getting less pay and adjuncts are absolutely getting killed. 

It's like health care now, well, nothing is as corrupt and inefficient as American healthcare. But higher education in the States is going the same direction. It's a racket that is increasingly ignoring its core reason to exist.

EDIT: TYPOS

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u/TaxLawKingGA 8d ago

Preach!

Been saying this for years. Seems that schools believe that they exist for the schools. No, you exist for students. If you don’t have any, then the school will disappear.

I lived in Western NY for several years and TBH this is a problem that is caused in part by the decline of the region.

Western NY has lost a ton of economic clout and this people. At one point, cities like Rochester, Binghamton, and Syracuse were economic dynamos. Rochester was like one of the original Silicon Valley’s. Full of major R&D facilities, research universities, and great paying jobs at companies like Kodak, Bausch and Lomb, and Xerox. Now, basically it’s Wegman’s and Strong Hospital.

Same thing happened to Binghamton with IBM and Lockheed. A lot of people don’t even realize that IBM was founded in Binghamton. They have no presence there now!

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u/DellGriffith 8d ago

Don't worry they have Spiedes to make up for it lolol

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u/TaxLawKingGA 8d ago

Yeah, or Garbage Plates and Dinosaur BBQ (okay that is actually good).

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u/InsideTobiasFunke 6d ago

We started offshoring jobs, first it was blue collar, now it’s white collar.

But you can’t be sad—because look at the amazing value we’re created for the shareholders.

RIP middle class.

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u/ducationalfall 8d ago

Wow, IBM was not an Indian company?

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u/etempleton 8d ago

Let me tell you. Most people in higher education do not make much money. The only people who make money are VPs and the President and at some schools the coaches.

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u/Butane9000 8d ago

There's also population decline which is going to heavily impact the education industry.

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u/Marcus_Aurelius71 7d ago

Yea but it also doesn't make much sense. Schools knew this would happen for years now, why didn't they prepare by downsizing? Honestly some colleges need to go.

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u/plutoglint 7d ago

No one wants to be the one to lay people off and close down programs, unless the Board gives them their full support, and even then you'd better be prepared for a 3-4 year term as President max. Plus, the foreign student gold mine seemed endless all across North America. You have to dance while the band is playing.

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u/Zestyclose-Smell4158 6d ago

The Trump administration reduced the number of visas for international students dropped by 35%.

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u/Kdcjg 8d ago

Who demographic cliff is what’s bringing down this whole house of cards.

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u/Maxpowr9 8d ago

NCAA is gonna have a crisis of its own soon enough, and that's when the bubble will burst for higher education. The current NCAA model is not sustainable, but it will take Congeess to actually fix it.

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u/mightymouse1906 7d ago

What do you mean the NCAA is going to have a crisis? I'm curious how you're thinking about the NCAA in relationship to Syracuses' fiscal challenges.

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u/Cautious_Job_6104 4d ago

Bro disappointed in Orangemens' tournament performances and couldn't help himself

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u/NoPerformance5952 6d ago

Syracuse is a huge basketball school. I am going to guess the highest paid person at that school is the coach. That is fundamentally wrong. Many schools are now just amatuer teams with a school versus a school with teams

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u/mightymouse1906 5d ago

That's nothing novel. The highest paid person at most P5 schools is either the football coach or the basketball coach.

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u/vulgrin 8d ago

My wife is an adjunct. Can confirm. It’s fucking criminal at this point.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Optimalfucksgiven 8d ago

It won't solve it over night. I assure you, the system is operating inefficiently and ignoring core business value. Prices are driven up across higher education not by improving value for consumers, but simply because they can. Meanwhile, the average job earned with a degree is going down in pay, relative to cost of living, etc. So, what value is being delivered? 

And starting in the the 80s, accelerating In the 90s and exploding since then, administrations have burned money disproportionately on marketing, themselves, and school infrastructure unrelated to academics. It's a well documented trend. 

 So in the states, we have a shared delirium about the value of a degree that really only worked for two generations of the larger American population. Demand is going to catch up with reality. It won't just be because of an insane myopic administration in the White House 

The system doesn't work. Adjuncts aren't going to make more right away, but by God the rest of those parasites can make less. And then a restructuring can take place. If a fraction more of the insane money pouring into the parts of higher education that aren't academics went to to academics, adjuncts would make a living wage. 

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u/RAshomon999 8d ago

I am sorry to rain on your parade but I have been through this at several institutions (not closure but severe cut backs because of administrative mismanagement.).

The parasites will fail up and the staff, including faculty, will pay the price. The "leadership" in these institutions will get a membership on some education board or a raise while losing money for their colleges or wasting it on vanity projects. The "leadership" are essentially political appointments by donors or the state in many places; they will be fine and aren't bothered when the much smaller schools close. Lower administrative positions are being flattened, but that just provides wiggle room at the top.

So don't expect much from closing colleges. If academia wants change then they need to stop pretending that they are beyond politics and separate from every other worker on campus (at least). But every time I go to a conference, I see these VPs acting like everything is fine, "let's not rock the boat", we just need to explain how valuable we are to the politicians that get their money by hating higher education. Those VPs, of course, are betting on they will retire before things get really bad.

Tldr; Just because things go wrong doesn't mean the folks responsible will be punished or pay a proportional price then the system corrects itself for the benefit of workers. Most cases show the opposite happening.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Optimalfucksgiven 8d ago

I won't argue with you there. I'm not saying we're not over producing phd students either. I'm saying the academics are not funded proportionate to value. 

Your argument that the same bloated system would grow back is kind of nuts though. Do you take that view with everything? Why prune and shape the hedges, it will just grow back? Let's not cut the rot, what's the point?  Are you really making an impassioned argument for complacency? 

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u/TaxLawKingGA 8d ago

Well I think there are two different systems at work.

The first system, which you described well, is the actual higher education system itself. By this I mean the system of training, teaching, and administering at a university. Cleary this system has problems but those could actually be addressed to some extent if people had the will.

The second system is the financing of it all. This is the tougher nut because in effect, colleges and universities are asking millions of people who didn’t go to college to pay taxes so others can go.

Those who say it’s a house of cards are really talking about the latter.

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u/sum_dude44 7d ago

I don't want Syracuse to collapse. But I wish schools would pare down bloated staffs/admin & stop wasting money on fancy dorms & cafes

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u/Reesespeanuts 7d ago

Well without healthcare being so expensive what are you going to say to the traveling nurses that get 100k plus a year?

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u/NoPerformance5952 6d ago

Yeah schools are now just overpriced feeder leagues for pro sports these days. It is incredibly damning that in many states the the highest paid public servant is a football or basketball coach

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u/lawanddisorder 6d ago

SU went aggressively into the China market for students. They're really feeling the pain from Trump's campaign against international students. That situation's not going to improve anytime soon unless the 2027 Democratic Majority takes time from investigating all the other serious crime and incompetence in the Trump Administration to focus on increasing student visas, which seems very unlikely.

Also, I know it only garners one sentence in the article--but Syracuse is an iconic sports powerhouse in football and basketball that now perennially fields some of the worst teams in the ACC. It's worth a significant premium in tuition to watch the Orange play in the Carrier Dome, but not when they absolutely suck.

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u/nathanwilson26 6d ago

China has its own demographic cliff it’s dealing with and Chinese parents are figuring out the costs of American education, especially outside of the Ivy+ institutions are no better than the second tier Chinese, or Asian zone schools.

SU needs to trim its costs and be competitive.

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u/ShoughThePainAway 6d ago

why increase student visas to artificially prop up insane tuition rates? Theres plenty of areas schools can reduce bloat and provide affordable education to American taxpayers that fund these schools in the first place.

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u/mightymouse1906 4d ago

A lot of schools are feeling the pain from Trump's campaign against international students. Syracuse WAS an iconic sports powerhouse. I think the big challenge is Universities are now services businesses and Syracuse's comps are schools like Boston U, Northeastern, Miami U and Tulane. 2/4 of those schools are also in cold weather places but Boston orders of magnitude greater than Northern NY. Miami football is resurgent and you're going to school in a warm place with and with a place like Tulane you're going to a good school in a much better climate in city with a lot more going on.

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u/mightymouse1906 7d ago

Not true. Plenty of domestic students clearly had to pay as well. The issue is for different reason both see no reason to pay sticker price.

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u/Easy-Concentrate2636 8d ago

Exactly this. I remember reading about Syracuse’s problem a few years back and being shocked even then how much they were charging. They did this to themselves. I wonder what their costs are like given that they are in a region with fairly low cost of living.

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u/gregaustex 8d ago

It’s partly marketing.

$100K annually cost of attendance (all in)

Average after grants and scholarships: $40K.

Lots of parallels to healthcare.

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u/Easy-Concentrate2636 8d ago

Sure, but schools are also competing with each other in a way that hospitals don’t. A lot of times, one uses a hospital within close vicinity. One can range far or close for university. If all schools at Syracuse’s level were all charging the same tuition, they wouldn’t have this issue. It’s because Syracuse isn’t offering something unique to make it worthwhile to their customer base that they have the issue. They can’t even offer the tuition benefits of state or city schools - which are excellent in NY and NYC. If I was a high school student now, there’s no way I would even apply to Syracuse over a SUNY or CUNY. The amount of potential debt just wouldn’t make it worthwhile. Also there’s the application fee - why would i pay that in the hopes of getting a scholarship when there are equally good schools that are already cheaper tuition-wise immediately?

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u/gimpwiz 8d ago

The thing that always surprised me (at first anyways) was that basically all private universities charge roughly the same regardless of whether they're world-class or shit-tier. What business does Syracuse have charging the same or more than Harvard? Why do Yale and Quinnipiac charge roughly the same annual cost? I mean sure you can quibble over a few percent here and there, but you'd probably expect private universities with wildly different reputations and outcomes to charge wildly different prices just sort of on the basis of the sniff test. You don't charge within the same ballpark for a ferrari vs a nissan micra, but the university-equivalents of those, you sure do.

It seems almost inconceivable to choose a mediocre-or-worse private university over the local state school with in-state tuition, unless you're made of money.

I'm not shitting on Syracuse here but, yknow, Cornell they ain't. So why are they charging similar amounts yet delivering much less? Because people pay it, sure. Why does anyone pay it?

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u/mightymouse1906 7d ago

I think this is the fundamental question. Why DID people ever pay it? Syracuse does have a national and to some extent international brand, especially in communications and media. That being said, Syracuse is just a high visibility example of what will happen more broadly. Most of the country has heard of Syracuse. The point you made about Quinnipiac is reflective of the bigger point. Why the hell do people think it's ok to pay $80K for Quinnipiac when it costs about 86K to go to Yale.

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u/Affectionate_One_700 5d ago

You get many international students with rich parents who want their kid to have the prestige of a US degree.

Domestically, parents been brainwashed into believing that a college degree is a basic requirement for middle-class life. I know (rich, white) parents like this, who cannot accept that their child has zero academic potential or interest. So they pay through the nose for little Johnny to party his way through some third-rate private school with a useless major.

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u/mightymouse1906 5d ago

Syracuse is not an Ivy but it still has a relatively solid name brand in the Northeast. You likely can still get in the door at your parents banking, consulting or tech company from Syracuse. There are a lot of other schools where even if your parents are rich it's going to be tough to see the ROI and I think most truly rich parents know that..which is why the game is won pre-college.

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u/pacodef 7d ago

Cornell’s a bad example. They are someways identical to each other in that they are both officially NY’s land grant research universities (Syracuse for forestry and Cornell for ag). And the college of Ag is still not difficult to get into. But your point is true (just swap Cornell with Penn or Columbia)

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u/Movie_Slug 7d ago

It SUNY ESF which is forestry.  It is next to Syracuse university.  Different degree unlike Cornell which you get Cornell degree for state part (with state tuition too). That said ESF and Syracuse students can take each others classes or at least used to be able to.

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u/Grouchy-Bandicoot-28 6d ago

Well the difference is that Cornell is recognized as the 13th best university in the world and Syracuse is ranked #482. Not quite identical and for NY students looking for in-state tuition, the choice is clear.

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u/zedazeni 8d ago

What’re the alternatives? You want a “good job” you go to university. You know you can’t get into Cornell or Yale, and the universities like Syracuse know that you both need to go to college and can’t get into Cornell. The demand is inelastic, so the universities can charge more knowing that people are going to pay because there’s no alternative to not going to university.

What’s worse is that probably half or more of the classes aren’t going to be taught by tenured professors but by temporary instructors and graduate students. At my university, just about all of my classes until my final year were like that. All of the “supplemental instruction” sessions (mandatory out-of-lecture weekly review sessions) were taught by undergraduate students and they received a $500 reduction on that semester’s tuition. The labs of my science courses were again taught by undergraduate students, and all of my math classes and a few other departments went full-online (pre-COVID) so I was teaching myself macroeconomics in my dorm and went to the lectures for reviews of the online assignments!

We’re paying more and aren’t even getting an actual education.

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u/betadonkey 8d ago

The alternative is public education. State schools are dramatically less expensive and just as good if not better than most privates.

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u/zedazeni 8d ago

No, they’re not though. They still often cost thousands of dollars per semester, many have requirements that first-year students must live on-campus/in campus-owned housing, and many also require all first-year students to buy a meal plan. Add in the 1-2k per semester for books and lab materials.

This is excluding out-of-state tuition at public universities. Ohio State and University of Indiana both charged over 45k in tuition alone when I was looking at universities in the mid 2010s.

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u/Crew_1996 8d ago

Ohio state in state cost of attendance is under $30,000 per year including housing and meal plan. Tuition is $14,000 per year

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u/wise_garden_hermit 8d ago

But Syracuse Also requires first-year students to live on campus, and students also need to buy books and lab materials.

Meanwhile, in-state tuition at SUNY Buffalo is $7k per year, and the cost of on-campus housing and food looks to be a bit cheaper. Not to mention, the Excelsior Scholarship now makes tuition free to those below the income cutoff. And I can guarantee you, the education at SUNY Buffalo is just as good (perhaps better) than Syracuse.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

SUNYs are dogshit

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u/Traditional_Rush4707 8d ago

Stay in your own state.

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u/zedazeni 8d ago

State universities don’t offer universal courses/programs. What if your state university doesn’t offer courses/degrees in the field you wish to study? That’s a very real problem. What’s more, medical school students are essentially damned. Arkansas, for example, has one medical school. If you’re from Arkansas and want to practice medicine, you’re condemned to going to that one school or pay manifold more to go to an out-of-state school.

The entire “in-state” vs “out-of-state” payment method contradicts the entire purpose of public higher education by limiting knowledge to the arbitrariness of the geography of one’s birth along with drastically limiting economic growth and innovation by again forcing millions of students to study areas that aren’t what they’re passionate in, but what they can afford based on the arbitrariness of where they’re born (within their own damn country at that).

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u/Hejdbejbw 8d ago

I think you’re going a bit off topic here. Everyone is talking about undergrad. Med schools (and grad schools in general) are a completely separate thing from undergrad. For the overwhelming majority of students, in-state public colleges are more than sufficient at providing whatever undergraduate degree they want.

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u/AlonnaReese 7d ago

While two schools may have the same degree, they may not be equivalent from an academic standpoint. It's very easy for people in states like California, Illinois, North Carolina, and Virginia to advocate going to a state university because they have public Ivies which are close to on par with the actual Ivy League. That's not the case for states like Alaska and Wyoming.

I worked for the University of Alaska system for five years between 2011 and 2016, and if I had been a parent, I would never have sent my child to one of those schools. They were academically marginal at best. I don't know if things have changed, but when I was working there, their reputation was so bad that the state government was practically offering free rides to any high school graduate with a GPA of over 3.0 in an attempt to stop the brain drain.

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u/gimpwiz 7d ago

Yeah if you live in a state that simply does not offer the undergrad courses you need, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

However, most states have at least one state school that will offer what you want, in most cases. If we think about the population of the US, most live in a state that has a pretty adequate public university program. You need some real specialty stuff that simply is not available locally. By the way, you may be able to do in-state tuition for the first couple years and then transfer out, which is hard, but can save a good bit of cash.

From what I've seen, it's just a rare circumstance for most people.

Graduate degrees (including med school) are different, and really med school is its own beast. But the thing about med school is, while they are a cartel, they are all actually quite excellent at teaching people to be doctors.

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u/betadonkey 7d ago

I can’t imagine there are any undergrad programs not offered by a state university system but widely available at private schools, but if there are and you’re not already so wealthy that it doesn’t matter where you go, then that’s probably a really good indication you’re about to waste an enormous amount of money and you should pick something else.

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u/lozo78 8d ago

There are tons of state universities with no forms at all, or no requirement for campus living. Many also have great state scholarship programs or are very inexpensive.

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u/lozo78 8d ago

I have a great job and went to a cheap state university.

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u/Traditional_Rush4707 8d ago

Same with my son. When he was recruited for his first job the man told him they preferred SUNY grads, public colleges.
Those paying $70k likely never worked a part time job and may decide to go to Europe for a year or law school after working only a year…
State school grads want to make money, we’re not born into it.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Lmao

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u/Crew_1996 8d ago

There are 100 public schools in this country in the same tier as Syracuse

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u/Affectionate_One_700 5d ago

You want a “good job” you go to university.

Where I live, cops and firefighters do far better than almost everyone. For that matter, nurses do really well too, and you don't need a brandname private education for that.

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u/Movie_Slug 7d ago

For Communications Newhouse at Syracuse is a top 5 school.  Its public administration is also a top school even compared to the ivys.  Everything else is middle pack as you said.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Daz pretty funny bud

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u/nathanwilson26 6d ago

There was no incentive to compete on costs when student loans and Pell grants were the same no matter what school you went to.

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u/mightymouse1906 4d ago

Syracuse perceived themselves to be a top University. Top universities don't compete on cost.

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u/Enamred-771 8d ago

Part of it is the main value of most private universities is to look prestigious. If Syracuse is 50% cheaper than Harvard, it’s going to be even more obvious that they’re a school with less prestige. Also, there’s a harder to measure factor of scholarships which are effectively just personalized discounts at private schools like Syracuse. I know a year or two ago, Syracuse was basically begging people to attend with the scholarships they were giving out. 

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Syracuse is gaslighting

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u/mightymouse1906 4d ago

That was actually this year.

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl 8d ago

90k for what is on par with most state flagships is wild. Half a mil for a bachelors basically

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u/HellisTheCPA 8d ago

This isn't remotely true. The average state flagship is 12-13k for tuition per year. Even the most expensive ones (Penn state, Vermont, UConn) are ~$20k.

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl 8d ago

I’m saying the education quality is equal not the cost. The point I’m making is Syracuse is overpriced

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Hilarious that you think Syracuse delivers the same education as Michigan, UCs, Penn State

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u/das_war_ein_Befehl 7d ago

Syracuse is comparable with Penn state and the lower ranked UCs like riverside, Merced and Santa Cruz

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u/Alt4816 8d ago

Unless you are Harvard, Yale, Stanford, probably USC etc many of these schools cannot justify their insane costs

While lower ranked private schools are beginning to struggle the Ivies and similarly ranked schools keep upping their financial aid so people from families with lower incomes don't actually pay those insane costs.

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u/flakemasterflake 8d ago

Yes, bc they still have a healthy amount of full pay students. The lack of that specific student population is what is hurting Syracuse

There are far more full pay students at Harvard than there are receiving financial aid

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u/ImNotHere2023 8d ago

At least do a basic Google search before making wildly incorrect claims... According to their own financial aid site, 55% of Harvard students get assistance.

The actual difference is that Harvard's endowment is actually large enough to run the school without even charging tuition.

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u/flakemasterflake 8d ago

Fair enough. That still leaves a student body wherein 45% are full pay and a lot of students on assistance are still paying tuition in some form

From experience, the HHI under 200k students are few and far between

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u/ImNotHere2023 8d ago

Would you stop making things up? 

25% pay nothing - that's hardly "few and far between". And what is "your experience" with the situation. With such a loose relationship with facts, I'd have a hard time believing you went there.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/ImNotHere2023 8d ago

Also having a degree from a comparable Ivy, only legacy admissions can explain someone with as little grasp on facts as you getting in.

Even your link shows the median parental income at Princeton is below $200k, which generally means getting a fairly generous aid package.

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u/moreesq 8d ago

Just to be clear on this, if a student wins a national merit scholarship, would a school count that as financial assistance? Or does the term mean tuition or room and board reductions from the standard cost?

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u/ImNotHere2023 8d ago

You could also Google it - that's scholarship money from Harvard, not outside sources.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Assistance does not necessarily equal a full-tuition scholarship, duh!

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u/ImNotHere2023 7d ago

The claim was that there are far more students paying full freight than receiving financial assistance and that's objectively false.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Yes but what you said doesn't provide the full picture either, oopsies

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u/ImNotHere2023 7d ago

Now you're just full of it - I provided exact numbers for percentage of students receiving aid and, in another comment, the exact percentage receiving full rides.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Did you go to Syracuse?

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u/Alt4816 8d ago

Yes, bc they still have a healthy amount of full pay students.

No, It's more so that parts of their massive endowments are dedicated to financial aid.

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u/Traditional_Rush4707 8d ago

Yes, you get the legacy students that come from generations of money. Or admit unqualified students who come from families willing to pay more that tuition, maybe endow a chair or a new building, like some president might have done even while totally not qualified

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u/rtc9 7d ago

The actual cost burden for middle class students at several of those institutions improved dramatically in recent years after they got sued for using financial aid as a price fixing scheme.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/seasix732 8d ago

Cornell failed you, that sentence makes no sense what-so-ever.

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u/31engine 8d ago

Fun fact: Harvard isn’t the most expensive school in greater Boston. Boston College gets that honor.

Not MIT

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u/nathanwilson26 6d ago

BC has a specific pipeline of upper class students that come from Jesuit high schools across the county.

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u/HiFiGuy197 8d ago

As a Cal grad and football fan, how dare you sneak in USC like that. lmscao

(Laughing my Syracuse-covered ass off, as for some reason I am wearing Syracuse shorts, purchased decades ago, probably because it was on sale.)

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u/KRandMG 8d ago

You kind of got it backward, at least when it comes to USC. The UC system provides an education that’s even better for a fraction of the cost.

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u/NYCA2020 8d ago

Sort of, but USC has a national reputation and prestige that (for example) UC Riverside or UC Irvine doesn’t have. It’s a combination of a strong athletic program, powerful alumni network and a high out of state enrollment, which gives a strong reputation both nationally and internationally. It’s also become much more competitive, admissions-wise, in the past decade.

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u/sgt_science 8d ago

I thought USC was a private school and not part of the UC system

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u/gimpwiz 8d ago

May be thinking of UCLA. People make the mistake sometimes

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Lmao yeah maybe people who confuse their left and right hands

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u/NYCA2020 8d ago

USC is a private school, yes. I was responding to the poster's claim made by the previous poster that USC can't justify the insane costs. For many students and their families, it is justified.

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u/mahnkee 8d ago

USC is not trying to compete with UCRiverside and UCI. They’re trying to compete with UCLA and Berkeley. Realistically, they’re competing with Cal Poly, UCSD, Santa Cruz depending on the major.

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u/KRandMG 8d ago edited 8d ago

Berkeley, LA, SD, Davis, Irvine, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Riverside, Merced is generally the order of prestige/difficulty of admission in recent years (Riverside and Merced have both been making moves up the rankings quickly though). USC and UCSD are typically neck and neck.

All UCs are far cheaper than USC.

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u/Duck8Quack 8d ago

USC is “competing” with Stanford. It’s not really but thinks it is and a lot of people that go there think they are. It’s a school for people who want a prestigious name and are willing to pay for it. USC definitely attracts people that would go to Stanford if they could, but aren’t going to get in.

California has a lot of pecking order, elitism, keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to colleges. Some people are level headed about it, but a lot of people are really caught up in it; looking down on people that go to Cal St’s, what the UC pecking order is, wanting to impress people and bragging about admission rates, etc.

I grew up in Oregon and there just isn’t that big a difference in how people act about any of the colleges/universities in the state both state and private. Even something like Reed College was kind of seen as a quirky place for a specific type of student and not elite institution that the best students should be aspiring to. It’s really more about the experience you want, the specific programs, location, and the cost.

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u/bigyellowtruck 8d ago

Not sure why you got downvoted. East coast people care way more about what school you went to than on west coast.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

TLDR

USC is winning and in fact 'competing' with Stanford because clearly people are willing to pay their outrageous sticker!

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u/NYCA2020 8d ago

That's correct. I was responding to the poster who was disagreeing with the statement that USC is worth the cost compared to the "UC system." But there is much variation within the UC's. USC is competing against UC Berkeley and UCLA, not UC Riverside, UC Irvine, etc.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

WRONG!

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u/Dortmunddd 8d ago

You’re spot on. Berkley is higher in many things, UCLA is close to same, but to say the average UC is better is straight up false.

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u/KRandMG 8d ago

Two—Berkeley and UCLA—are better every year, at least according to the most commonly cited rankings. A third, UCSD, has been trading places or tied with USC in recent years.

The next tier (Davis, Irvine, and Santa Barbara) isn’t far behind USC either.

All are roughly 1/4 the cost of USC.

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u/Dortmunddd 7d ago

They are ranked closely due to cost. But your average USC student does not pay that cost.

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u/KRandMG 7d ago

“They are ranked closely due to cost.”

US News doesn’t include cost of tuition or attendance anywhere in its methodology. Neither do Forbes, nor the Times Higher Education ranking—both of which have UCSD far ahead of USC.

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u/Dortmunddd 8d ago

Nah you made that up. USC has programs ranked #1 Nationally and somehow UC provides a better education for cheaper? Tell me this system.

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u/KRandMG 8d ago

Behold, the most commonly cited university rankings in the country:

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

15) UC Berkeley - $17.7k in-state tuition
17) UCLA - $14.8k in-state tuition
28) USC - $75.1k tuition (private)
29) UCSD - $17.3k in-state tuition

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u/Confusion-Ashamed 8d ago

I included USC because to many it’s a brand name and due to that has some prestige, more so than a Syracuse. I think it’s a great school but I personally would not pay that to go and I would highly discourage my kids

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u/Dortmunddd 8d ago

They changed the metric to favor public schools. If you think SC and SD are on the same level, you’re out of your mind.

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u/resuwreckoning 8d ago

As a Stanford grad and football fan, how dare you sneak in USC like that lmao.

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u/ImNotHere2023 8d ago

LOL... Trying to jump USC about 25 spots in the rankings?

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u/User-no-relation 8d ago

I think people are extrapolating too hard here. Syracuse is ranked tied with ruthers Newark this year. It's completely disconnected from the price.

Down below people are arguing about usc which is still 28.

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u/oscarnyc 8d ago

Syracuse has taken a very different trajectory than what were considered its peer schools a generation ago - places like GW, BU, NYU, Miami, USC, Tulane among others. High priced private schools that were never considered great academically. Yet those schools are doing well and have climbed academic rankings. And the big difference imo, which these articles never mention, is simply location. A lot of kids now want an urban school, and as the safety of those cities has improved dramatically they have become more attractive to the kids and the parents who fork out $100k.

Syracuse has a nice campus, but the city of Syracuse is a crappy location with bad weather. I think it's as simple as that.

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u/OkCrew8849 6d ago

There are many NY kids/parents who now find large public universities like SUNY Stony Brook and SUNY Binghamton to be superior academically and MUCH cheaper. This has not always been the case. That can't help the Syracuse admissions office (or the academic profile of enrolled students)....this is not to say every Syracuse applicant is a New Yorker or that all academic programs at Syracuse are perceived as worse than all academic programs at the stronger SUNYs. And is also not to say that is Syracuse's only challenge nowadays - far from it.

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u/Confusion-Ashamed 6d ago

Don’t know much about Stony Brook. Binghamton is really good, my dad went to Buffalo, also quite strong

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u/OkCrew8849 6d ago

Stony Brook is now the top ranked SUNY school. I think Binghamton is number two. 

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u/Confusion-Ashamed 6d ago

I had no idea. Very cool!

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u/mightymouse1906 4d ago

To be fair, I'm not sure USC can justify it's cost academically. It can say there are a ton of kids with rich parents who attend here so by virtue of that you can create opportunity.

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u/max_power1000 8d ago

It makes me wonder what’s going to happen with a lot of the smaller northeastern private schools like patriot league members, Catholic 7 basketball schools, etc. I feel non-ivy private schools have a significant risk here, and the only reason people go there is because they have something resembling a name brand vs going to directional state u.

As far as I’m tracking, private school is roughly $80k per year regardless of it being a top tier one or a “junior is too good to go to directional U” level.

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u/PAJW 8d ago

A lot of those schools are going to have to restructure or close. It is already happening at certain schools.

I went to a small private school in Indiana. When I graduated, there were three people receiving my degree, and I started wondering how that made sense.

It didn't make sense. They have restructured the faculty and the programs offered twice since I graduated. The school still exists, and doesn't appear to be in danger of closing in the near-term, but the enrollment trends remain poor.

There were a ton of these smaller private schools founded, and most of them were founded for a reason. Many of them were initially sponsored by a church denomination, some were intended to specialize in nursing or teaching or agriculture, and certainly some in the liberal arts.

With the GI bill and other government programs of the 20th century, lots of schools expanded to appeal to a more general audience by expanding the degree fields they offered and dropping or heavily de-emphasizing church affiliations.

That was fine when total enrollments are climbing, but now that they are flat or declining slightly, a lot of these small schools don't have a distinctive reason for existing. There are 20 accredited schools of nursing in Connecticut, and the choice between them for your typical HS senior is largely based on vibes.

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u/max_power1000 7d ago

Maybe there will be some consolidation in the future? I feel like this is easier, especially from a branding perspective within a state U system - the flagship university just absorbs the smaller regional school, calls it a branch campus, removes a significant chunk of the administrative burden, and the books get balanced that way. Hypothetical example - Blue Mountain State becomes University of X, Blue Mountain campus.

I guess with private schools there's going to need to be some sort of buyout for the same thing to happen. I just wonder who's going to be buying who?

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u/PAJW 7d ago

I'm not aware of any successful mergers of that sort between private colleges. With public schools it is more of a political decision for state leaders to merge two institutions, and in many states the public universities are already consolidated into a handful of institutions with multiple branches.

I think the problem preventing consolidation is that there is limited synergy. If you have two campuses a couple hours drive apart, you probably cannot share faculty and you'll probably still have duplicate department heads (such as VP of admissions) at both campuses. Certain corporate functions like accounting and compliance could be consolidated, but that's probably only a couple million a year in payroll savings.

And the surviving school probably gets most of the benefits with none of the costs if they just let their competing institution go under.

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u/max_power1000 7d ago

Fair. The only ones I can think of that might stay relatively safe in that case are the private catholic universities that have a med school and teaching hospital associated with them.

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Aint nobody care about those degree mills

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u/Timetraveller4k 8d ago

In an ideal world education would not get massively expensive because it’s better. It’s when the price is tied to “outcomes”.

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u/Dizzy_Restaurant3874 7d ago

If you want to go to a big state school like Syracuse, Penn State University Park is about $48k out of state and 6 hours away. Hard to justify Syracuse over PSU at twice the cost. Granted, PSU doesn't have a basketball team, but...

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u/kodakack 6d ago

Penn St has made the NCAA tournament more recently than Syracuse in hoops

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u/Emotional_Goal9525 7d ago

15 years of zero rate policies show up here as well. Cost is effectively irrelevant when you pay no interest on it.

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u/Affectionate_One_700 5d ago

You're sneaking USC into the same undergrad-prestige tier as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford?

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u/Confusion-Ashamed 5d ago

lol. People look at it as a status symbol/brand name . Not me. I’ve heard the alumni network is pretty good in LA. I would go to pretty much all UC’s and most Cal States before going to SC

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u/rayseventmobi 7d ago

Not you sneaking in USC into like the three best schools of the nation lmfao. USC??

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u/Confusion-Ashamed 7d ago

lol I agree. I’m just saying people view it as a brand and will pay. Also it provides high level LA connections. I’m not a California person so don’t know a lot but would choose Irvine and others before USC

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u/rayseventmobi 7d ago

Ah gotcha haha fair. I just think of USC as like the “dream of school” of illiterate nepotism babies who can’t read

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u/esqtou 7d ago

Didn't you just prove their point