Student tuition may be financing much more than students' actual in-class experience, according to a report on how college tuition is spent by colleges released by the Delta Cost Project, a Washington-based non-profit group that seeks to increase education affordability, on Thursday. The project's data showed that research, public outreach and financial aid actually have the fastest-growing budgets, even though these areas are not directly related to students' experience in the classroom. The project also found that despite constantly increasing tuitions and enrollment rates, the percent of degree completion in the United States has not increased and ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations. The rate of degree completion in the United States was 54 percent in 2007, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while the average for all industrialized countries was 74 percent.
As tuition prices continue to rise, many colleges are having difficulty offering a steady amount of financial aid, and as a result, they are turning to alumni and other donors for additional financial assistance, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Colleges of all sizes are struggling, especially in light of the current economic climate. Many alumni gifts are already specified towards certain projects and cannot be used to ease the colleges' financial aid hardships. Because of this, many colleges are requesting that alumni directly give money towards financial aid, which some colleges report has actually encouraged alumni to be more generous.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Revenue Thomas Wolf '71 has been selected to deliver Pennsylvania State University at York's 38th annual commencement speech, according to the school's web site. Wolf was nominated to serve as Secretary of Revenue by Governor Edward G. Rendell in January 2007. Prior to his position as Secretary, Wolf served as Chairman of the Board and President of a family-owned building materials business called Wolf Organization. He graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth and earned his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
