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By COLIN HICKEY
Staff Writer 09/09/2007

enlarge Staff photo by Jeff Pouland

THREE IN, THREE OUT: Janet and Bert Corrigan of Smithfield put their three children Joseph, Melissa and Michelle through college. Joseph and Michelle went to Colby College and Melissa attended the University of Maine.

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"We were flabbergasted and concerned," Janet Corrigan said. "It was almost overwhelming at times, because we didn't know how we were going to do it."

Bert Corrigan worked at Scott Paper Co. in Winslow at the time, while Jan held a job as an insurance agent at GHM in Waterville.

"We were middle-class working folks," Bert Corrigan said. "We still are."

Middle-class working folks versus the price of a college education.

Many would call it a mismatch -- certainly the Corrigans would.

But college administrators will tell you the prices they charge are necessary, the result of unavoidable costs, and ones that can vary widely from college to college, depending on a school's size, mission and wealth, among other factors.

Consider first that college costs tend to be labor-driven, with most of those laborers highly educated professionals. Add to this that colleges compete against one another for the best and the brightest educators, and that schools want to offer small professor-student ratios and you have a recipe for escalating costs.

Other factors naturally enter into the equation. Amenities on college campuses, for instance, have grown more abundant and, in many cases, more lavish. Technology updates and upgrades, essential for most colleges, can carry a hefty price as well. Higher energy prices also have had an impact, as they have in every other industry and household budget.

The price of education caused the Corrigans considerable financial stress for more than a decade.

FINANCIAL PAIN

But they persevered and managed to get their three children through college, including two who graduated from Colby, one of the most expensive private colleges in the state.

In the process, though, they dealt with the frustration of seeing college bills routinely outstrip the inflation rate, which meant each year they had a heavier debt load to shoulder.

Their eldest daughter, Michelle Corrigan Rios, graduated from Colby in 1992. Her first year the Waterville liberal arts school charged a comprehensive fee of $17,150.

In Rios' final year, that price had risen to $21,800, a 27 percent increase in three years.

A similar scenario held true for Joseph, the Corrigans' second child, who earned his Colby diploma in 1997. Colby's comprehensive fee went from $24,230 to $27,900, a 15 percent hike over Joseph's four years, the Corrigans said.

"His last year I was ready to blow a gasket," Janet Corrigan said. "I was thinking this is not going to happen."

At the time, the Corrigans also had to absorb the additional expense of sending their third child, Melissa, to the University of Maine.

Parker Beverage, Colby's dean of admissions, understands the financial pain the Corrigans endured.

He acknowledges that the "sticker price" of obtaining an education at a four-year college, especially at prestigious private schools, can be intimidating, even to people with high incomes.

But Beverage and other higher education administrators stress that people need to get past sticker price shock. Those that do, they said, discover that college can be affordable.

Grants, loans, scholarships and work programs all help to reduce the charge, sometimes to a significant degree. But what such financial aid fails to do is change the central truth: a college education is costly.

HOW COME?

Colby this year -- the 2007-08 academic year -- has a comprehensive fee of $46,100.

That fee covers tuition, room and board, and fees for the Student Government Association and use of the college health services.

Colby's fees are in line with the comprehensive price charged at Bowdoin and Bates, two colleges comparable to Colby. Yet $46,100 does not reflect the true cost of providing a Colby education, Beverage said.

That cost is actually higher, he said. The comprehensive fee is less, he said, because a portion of the annual interest from Colby's nearly $500 million endowment -- a fund built on gifts and donations to the college -- is used each year to reduce operating expenses.

At the University of Maine, the comprehensive price is $15,814 ($8,330 tuition, $7,484 room and board) for Maine residents. That is more than $31,000 less than Colby's charge.

That difference, in large part, is due to the subsidy the University of Maine receives from the state. Colby, as a private school, gets no state subsidy.

What is the true cost of a University of Maine education? A look at the price paid by out-of-state students gives a better indication.

Out-of-state students do not get the benefits of state subsidy. As a result they pay a much higher tuition -- $20,540 in 2007-08 -- than do in-state counterparts.

Add room and board and the total is $28,024, or more than $12,000 greater than in-state students.

On the other hand, $28,024 is still more than $13,000 less than a Colby education.

So why the difference?

Both Colby's Beverage and James Breece, University of Maine's vice chancellor, point to the educational experience and mission of their schools.

UMaine has an undergraduate enrollment of nearly 12,000, as opposed to about 2,000 for Colby. The majority of students at Orono are from Maine.

Colby, in contrast, has gone to great lengths to diversify its student population in recent years. Beverage said Colby admissions staff took recruitment trips to California, as well as overseas to Pacific rim countries such as Singapore and Indonesia.

"I think probably that has become a phenomenon that is more omnipresent today than it once was," Beverage said. "California is now the fifth best represented state among incoming students."

DIFFERENT MISSIONS

In that sense, Beverage said, Colby has a much different mission than the University of Maine, where the primary concern is to meet the education needs of residents.

Colby also has a much smaller student body than the University of Maine and a teacher-to-student ratio of 10 to 1 as opposed to 14 to 1 for UMaine.

That ratio is significant when it comes to cost given that the average salary of a full professor at Colby is $104,000 versus $75,000 at Orono, according to the National Education Association Almanac of Higher Education.

Amenities also differ. Colby competes for students against other small private liberal arts schools, in New England, primarily. Bowdoin and Bates are the chief competition in Maine, but there also is Williams in Massachusetts, Middlebury in Vermont and Hamilton in New York. To compete successfully, Colby has to make sure its athletic facilities, housing, dining services and other amenities keep pace with that competition, which in recent years has grown increasingly more expensive, Beverage said.

The latest example, completed this month, is a $10 million expansion of Cotter Union, the college's student center.

UMaine offers amenities as well -- athletic facilities, museums, centers for the arts. The university just opened a $25 million Student Recreation and Fitness Center.

Like Colby, the university competes for students, although UMaine's mission is different, Breece said.

Breece said UMaine is charged with serving the greater public, not just the students who enroll at the university.

At the same time, he said, UMaine is a center for research and development and thus must make significant investments in that regard.

UMaine also offers more technical programs, such as engineering, which demand expensive machines and equipment, he said. The Laboratory for Surface Science & Technology, for example, houses millions of dollars in sophisticated instruments and materials and is just one of more than a dozen centers for research on campus.

The university has an obligation, too, to meet the educational needs of all Mainers and thus has made considerable investments in distance learning.

SOARING INCREASES

Whether at a private or public college, the annual price to attend often increases well above the inflation rate.

The University of Maine tuition and mandatory fees for in-state students, for instance, soared 11.2 percent for 2006-07 to 2007-08.

This is more than four times the 2.5 percent rise in the consumer price index -- a measure of inflation -- in 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Colby's most recent comprehensive fee increase, from $44,080 to $46,100, also is higher than the 2006 CPI, but at 4.5 percent a less severe climb than the UMaine hike.

A major reason for the increases at UMaine has been the steep decline in the per student state subsidy since 1989.

According to data in the University of Maine fiscal year 2008 Operating Budget & Student Charges document, the per student subsidy has fallen from about $8,200 in 1989 to about $5,300 in 2008.

With less money coming from the state, UMaine is forced to increase tuition and fees in order to keep up with costs.

Colby College economics professor James Meehan said the mission of higher education goes counter to reducing costs.

"I think there have been prolonged periods of time where the rate of increase in college prices has been above the rate of inflation," he said. "One of the big reasons is colleges are in a market where there are not a lot of productivity gains, especially in the teaching part of it. I mean everybody wants smaller classes, not bigger ones ... Parents don't send their children to Colby to be in a large lecture room with hundreds of students."

Breece points out, too, that colleges also must deal with many of the same cost drivers other industries face, including health care and energy expenses that have grown significantly in recent years.

And because they are institutes of higher learning, colleges also are obligated to keep current with existing technology, as well as investing in the latest technological developments, he said. All of which leads to the tuition and fees people like the Corrigans pay so their children can earn a college degree.

For 121/2 years, Janet Corrigan said, she used every paycheck she earned to pay for college bills.

At times, she said, she and her husband wondered if they could survive financially. And they often wondered why the price was so high. But they always believed, she said, that the reward would justify the expense and the sacrifices that expense made necessary. And their belief proved to be valid. All three of their children have gone on to become successful in their fields: Joseph a lawyer, Michelle a vice president of a prestigious public relations firm and Melissa a licensed clinician with a mental health company.

"We said a lot of things," she said, "but it didn't stop us . We still made sure they went."

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com

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