Trustees | Costs

New Website Provides Insight Into College Finances

ULOOP   |  February 4, 2019 by Madison White

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, ACTA, a non-profit and non-partisan organization, has recently launched a website called howcollegesspendmoney.com/ that offers crucial financial information from over 1,500 public and private universities across the country.

When researching college costs, it may be frustrating trying to find accurate information and you may have to search several websites just to find one number. This can be made even more difficult if you are trying to compare a list of multiple schools. HowCollegesSpendMoney.com is a reliable resource that has all the crucial numbers you need and will allow you to compare numbers from different schools with more immediacy.

While it may be easy to find tuition numbers on other websites, other financial statistics like retention rates, graduation rates, and institutional spending reports are not so readily available. Because some universities would rather keep their spending quiet, some of these statistics are almost completely hidden. All of these factors and more are available on HowCollegesSpendMoney.com. Access to this information could help you predict future tuition rates, how likely you are to graduate, and determine whether you agree with the university’s spending history.

Students are facing many worries when it comes to paying for college and dealing with student debt. With tuition prices and student fees increasing almost every year, students often wonder what all their money is going to. It is well-known that many colleges have what is called “administrative bloat” where they hire too many administrative positions, or overpay certain high-up administrators. Students are often disappointed to find out that their tuition dollars aren’t going towards bettering research, building better facilities, or rewarding outstanding professors. Heidi Ganahl, Regent at the University of Colorado, believes that this website will be “a major tool to help us tackle administrative expense bloat on our college campuses.”

Michael Poliakoff, ACTA’s president, hopes that this website will help “equip college trustees and leaders to be more effective stewards of their institutions.” By providing transparent information about university finances, the website should help push colleges to re-evaluate their institutional spending and help students spend less overall.

This website appears to be a massive step towards a fairer, more transparent financial future for university students across the country.

If you would like to learn more or explore the website, you can visit it at www.howcollegesspendmoney.com.

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