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We all know that choosing a college is one of the biggest investments your family will ever make, but it doesn't have to be the most stressful. Each and every episode, we pull up a virtual chair to cut through the jargon and tackle the real-world questions about admissions and finances and even the financial health and viability of colleges.
Gary Stocker (00:01.11)
You are listening to the Kitchen Table College Chat with Mark De Boer. Hi, everybody. I'm Gary Stocker, and Mark, of course, is alongside half a continent away. And and as we share week in and week out, we know that choosing a college is one of the biggest investments your family and our families will ever make. But it doesn't have to be that stressful. Each week, what Mark and I try and do is provide some perspective for sure, some guidance, some things to think about in terms of that college decision.
We are not college counselors, we are higher education professionals in a variety of roles over the years, and we give you things to think about that in many cases you probably haven't thought about before. And today, Mark, here's the theme, and it's happening week in and week out. And I do another podcast called This Week in College Availability. It happens so often, I do this each week. Colleges are closing majors, they're cutting programs, they're cutting majors effectively every week.
Marc (00:51.713)
Mm.
Gary Stocker (00:56.556)
And we're not talking about the small colleges, we're not talking about the small private colleges. We're talking about colleges across the spectrum, from the Ivies all the way down to the college with a couple hundred students. And so so, Mark, before we get to the question, the theme the theme for the day, we did have some questions from last week. And I want to throw the first one at you. This is from a listener from last week. And our theme last week was tuition does not equal cost. And this person asked, Should I pay attention to a college's list price, Mark?
Marc (01:08.728)
First of all, it's great to talk to everyone. Second, I'm not sure why you, Gary, get a big long two minute introduction of yourself. And I don't get a two minute introduction.
We'll work on that in future episodes though. Maybe. So list price absolutely matters. You know, it's interesting. I'm actually literally before I joined this podcast with Gary, I'm in the process of potentially buying a new car for myself. And I found a website and the URL doesn't matter, but it shows you the last one year of the price changes of the car. And it shows you how it moves.
Gary Stocker (01:39.574)
Write your own introduction, Mark.
Marc (02:05.707)
So basically saying is the sticker price you're seeing today, the right sticker price, the best sticker price, and it's just one of many negotiating points. The same goes for colleges. If colleges are raising prices, which we know they are every year, it's your job as a parent, guardian, or all the words that Gary uses every week. It's your job to not only negotiate, but to question why did the price go up?
Was it simply just an adjustment in inflation that, inflation went up and that's what we're doing? Or were there reasons for it? It's your job to dig into it, find out what's going on and make them justify their list price.
Gary Stocker (02:47.349)
And yeah, and and I can't add any more than that, because the second question kind of ties in with that, Mark. and another listener asks, are scholarships or tuition discounts they're kind of interchangeable, most are discounts. Are scholarships or tuition discounts good for all four years? And Mark, if you were to look down at my feet, I do not have my tap shoes on, but I'm gonna tap dance. I'm gonna tap dance around this question a little bit. Are scholarships good for four years? Kind of. It depends.
Marc (02:52.851)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (03:16.275)
if you ask for them, you might be able to get that in writing. If you don't ask for them, some colleges it's a one-year offer. but even if it's a four-year offer, and Mark, you just referenced this, colleges raise prices effectively every year. There are exceptions to that. And so if you got a 50% discount, which is a little bit below average, for your tuition, and they raise the price three to five percent the next year, your scholarship or tuition discount goes down as well.
Marc (03:31.006)
Yep.
Gary Stocker (03:44.928)
It may drop from fifty percent to forty-seven percent, forty-six percent. Do that over the course of four years, and that fifty percent discount may end up in a high thirty, low forty kind number. So it it depends. But the best guidance we can give you, get it in writing. That fifty-seven percent discount, which is where the average is now, get it in writing, it's good for all four years. You might even think, Mark, about may asking it to be good for six years. Because as you and I have just discussed before, not even half of colleges graduate their students in four years and that
Marc (03:59.224)
Yep.
Marc (04:12.45)
Okay.
Gary Stocker (04:14.625)
Fifth and sixth year is just expensive. And we've talked about that before. And then let me throw the last question at you. And and you know, you and I both follow social media and we had a listener ask, What should I make of all the users and all their opinions and posts on social media? Mark, what are your thoughts?
Marc (04:32.059)
You know, I am very anti-social media, anti-technology. I don't like it. Right? Which means to me, take it with a grain of salt. Here's an example. At the college I worked at, we used to have a flourishing
Gary Stocker (04:41.281)
That's it, you're fired.
Marc (04:54.739)
parents community on Facebook and the parents had many things to say was well good and bad. But you know, I think it was a real eye opener for a lot of parents who incoming parents who would talk to senior parents saying, Hey, my child went through X or watch out for this or make sure your child doesn't go to this party or whatever that may be.
Yeah, there's good information in there that you can learn kind of behind the scenes, but at the same token with a grain of salt.
Gary Stocker (05:28.075)
And you know grain of salt is a good theme, and one of the things I noticed, it's kind of similar to what you said, Mark, is a lot of these are my son is, my daughter is, and they proceed to say, Doing really well with high grades and all those kind of things. And then they ask a specific question. There might be value in that, just to get the theme of what that's going on. I see a lot of concerning posts that are by students themselves that in many cases use profanities. And the essence of those comments are, college isn't worth it for me. I'm being very nice here.
Marc (05:50.933)
Mm.
Gary Stocker (05:57.716)
and that that's concerning because as you and I've talked, colleges, you know, I just read before you and I jumped on to the show today, that there are all sorts of folks saying college graduation is a good deal. And they're right. What they're not talking about and that applies to these some of these social media posts, is it's not a good deal for students that don't graduate. And so I'm reading the social media post that says college sucks for whatever reason and and legitimate or otherwise. And those are part of the folks for whom college is not a good deal.
Marc (06:21.818)
Yep.
Gary Stocker (06:27.295)
And that's for s for whom the you know the decision to go to college, in spite of all the marketing, is one you really need to think through with your friends, your family, your parents for sure, because social media goes in all directions and a lot of it is just opinions and we're entitled, but you have to take it into context, as you put very nicely, Mark. So we opened the show with colleges because of the economic, the challenging economic environment, are cutting majors or cutting programs regularly. Mark, what's your observation on that?
Marc (06:38.416)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Marc (06:57.508)
Well, I think, I think you would have a better observation than I do, but I definitely see it more often. know, it, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the economy that's going right now. And the affordability crisis is the phrase that's thrown out and everything's more expensive. And that goes the same for colleges costs are going up. So, you know, when I was in colleges, I was constantly looking at what are the graduation rates of certain majors? What is the admissions yield of certain majors?
And then tying that into what is the cost of our tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, associate professors, non-tenured, you all of that. And when you look at the cost, you have to say, is this major that brings in 50 kids, that graduates 10, that has a cost to run it of four to $500,000, is it worth it? Now, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, the answer was yes.
And a hundred years ago, answer is yes, because colleges wanted to be the one stop shop where we can be everything for any major. But the reality is moving forward, colleges are forced right or wrong, probably more right to become specialists. They need to pick their field, pick their lane, stay in their lane and not be the jack of all trades. What do you think?
Gary Stocker (08:15.025)
And I I guess I wanna go a little inside baseball. And you mentioned a coup a couple of terms that I wanna we've talked about before, but I'm gonna talk about again. You mentioned admissions yield and percent admitted. And we track that on our college liability apps and per and per admissions yield excuse me, is a percentage of students that a college accepts that actually show up. So the higher the number, the better.
Now there's one exception to that, and that is the the Ivies and the top power for top publics. They want a low admissions yield. They 3, 4, 5, 6%. Everybody else needs to be 20 plus. Now you won't very you rarely see them above 30 or 40%, on occasion above 50%. But admissions yield is really a market indication of, hey, I like this college. It's a market indication that's worthwhile. The other one is percent admitted. It kind of ties in a little bit with that social media comment I had a minute ago. And
Marc (08:52.881)
Hmm.
Gary Stocker (09:07.799)
Colleges, because they have budgets and they have revenue attached to those budgets and they have expenses attached to those budgets, will oftentimes admit a really large percentage of students. And and I the the the somewhat teasing, somewhat sarcastic phrase I use is if a college admits more than 85 or 90% of its applicants, it's a heartbeat college. Half heartbeat will admit. And these colleges will push back and say, Well, we admit everybody.
Marc (09:33.084)
Yep. Yep.
Gary Stocker (09:37.548)
Because we're on open enrollment. And and that's fine, but that also indicates you're not very selective. It's also reflected in really poor graduation rates, because you're admitting students who in t in in too many cases are not academically prepared nor financially capable of attending colleges. But let's let's then get back to the topic of the day, which which is your major was just cut. Well, don't don't get yourself in that position.
Marc (09:37.62)
Yeah.
Marc (09:53.325)
Yep.
Marc (10:01.779)
it
Gary Stocker (10:04.297)
And again, at college viability, we have some something called the college majors completion tool. We've just recently added that to our inspection report. And it will tell you that if you're going to Mark Debore University for the last four years, he's averaged three people completing their journalism degree. I'm making up the numbers. That's not a good number. That's not a good number, right? You want to look at the majors completed for whatever colleges you're considering, and you want on the low side.
Marc (10:23.752)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (10:32.747)
You want that average to be five. And I'll talk about that. Why we'll talk about why here in a second. But really, you want that to be a 20, 30, 40, 50, at least number of students completing each year. Here's the background on that. It just in the last year, year and a half, a handful plus of states for their public public colleges have looked at completed majors and mandated by law that if a major doesn't complete, and the average is around five over three or four years, if it doesn't average five completions.
Marc (10:35.199)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (11:01.599)
over the course of three or four years, those public colleges are required to eliminate that program.
Marc (11:06.964)
Hmm.
Gary Stocker (11:08.206)
So mark your thoughts on that, then I've got one more follow up.
Marc (11:11.592)
Well, but I think, correct me if I'm wrong, you're speaking in nominal numbers, not in percentages, correct? So, mean, doesn't it, I mean, to me, you know, a low nominal number five is just embarrassingly low, unless it's a super, super like niche, you know, there's only two of these jobs in the world, then fine, so be it. And I don't know, I don't know what that job is.
Gary Stocker (11:18.231)
Correct.
Gary Stocker (11:31.721)
Yeah, right.
Marc (11:35.433)
But the reality is I think I would be more concerned with percentages than I would be nominal numbers. And I say that because a nominal number, if you're in the single digits, it's bad. If you're in 10, 20, it's still bad. And of course, I think that's relative to the size of the school. If you're looking at a state school, which is 10, 20, 30,000, if you're below 100, there's a problem. Now, if you're in a small private that has maybe two to 5,000,
Maybe, but then again, if I'm a parent, I am going to cross reference that to the number of faculty in that program. If there are 10 faculty in that program, that is your first red flag of, on a second here. We have some tenured people who are not leaving.
Gary Stocker (12:17.429)
Yeah. Good point.
Gary Stocker (12:22.805)
That's good point. And I I you know I I I I'm about to brag, Mark. I'm prescient. I'm prescient. And when when I developed with others the college, the college majors completion app, we actually look at what's called internal market share. And again, use that journalism major. If there are five journalism majors and a hundred total majors, journalism is five percent, five out of hundred, five percent of that completed majors for the majors that we track.
Marc (12:28.061)
Don't do it.
Marc (12:48.411)
Mm-hmm.
Gary Stocker (12:51.147)
That's probably disposable. That's probably one colleges can take a look at and say, I'm not going there. But you know, psychology, business, biology, sometimes chemistry, you know, they have high T numbers in terms of internal market share. Those are strong. They ain't going anywhere. I'm not gonna talk about this today, but we also track external market share.
Marc (12:53.549)
Yeah.
Marc (13:05.506)
Yeah.
Marc (13:09.585)
Yep.
Gary Stocker (13:09.637)
And and you can s get it from the same app, it tracks it. I'm not gonna go into details. But the other part I want to do a follow-up on, Mark, was we talked about public entities in Ohio and Indiana, Texas, Oklahoma, some other places mandating publics cut programs with low completions. Privates, of course, don't have that mandate. Each Tuesday I do the College Financial Health Show with Matt Hendricks, and almost every week we look at the low enrollment, low completion majors for privates.
Marc (13:25.381)
Hmm
Gary Stocker (13:39.008)
And we did a couple of this week and I have them in front of me. One was Olivet in Michigan, and the other was I can't remember. And both of them had more than a dozen low enrollment, low completion majors. And we see that more often than we don't. And and private colleges with all the expense challenges and revenue challenges they face are still holding on to low completion majors. Now, if you're a faculty member, you're throwing something at your computer right now or at your iPhone, saying, Well, yes, but accounting majors
Marc (13:44.646)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (14:07.361)
take other classes, they take business classes, and they take philosophy classes. I understand that. But it's still, it's still when you talk about comparisons, I'm sending my child to a college that has forty forty-seven journalism completion majors over the last five years, not to one that has four point seven. It's just a fact of life. Colleges like any business will in due course, don't know when that will be, probably sooner rather than later, in due course we'll cut programs that are high expense, low revenue.
Marc (14:16.742)
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think, I think this is very opinionated that gone are the days of the
Uber liberal arts degree where the accounting major needs to take philosophy. cause I think people are pushing back, but you know, the interesting thing that I saw at a few colleges where, where I am geographically, was very interesting. Where it would be the college of the arts would come up with their own business program, accounting major, whatever it might be, because they would offer it at a lower per credit dollar rate.
than the business school would and the, the college of science. And now they created this dwarfing system where it's, Hey, you who should offer accounting and we have different accounting principles. I mean, what a cluster, you know what? It was all bad, but you know, I want to go back. said, I want to pick your brain on, uh, the college cuts and really when I want to go into a question, I think, I think most parents are asking, or at least thinking of.
Gary Stocker (15:26.177)
Yeah.
Marc (15:38.59)
I have Little Johnny at Gary Stocker University, which if anyone's listening, if anyone who's been an avid listener knows Gary Stocker University's endowment is not doing well. And Little Johnny is a sophomore and Little Johnny's major was just eliminated. Can you walk us through what that looks like now for the next two years? Because he's a sophomore, he's a rising, so he has a junior senior year.
Gary Stocker (15:41.877)
Yay, yay.
Gary Stocker (15:49.31)
Ha ha.
Gary Stocker (16:03.063)
Well yeah, yeah.
Marc (16:06.627)
He is a, let's say to your accounting major, what's it, what's it going to look like for him?
Gary Stocker (16:11.053)
Well, first of all, the first thing is check first. Before you decide to go to Gary Stocker University, make sure that whatever Johnny's looking at, I have a decent enrollment. But the second thing is in in colleges are are really good about those students who started Little Johnny, letting him or her complete that major. I I can't I can't I can't remember a situation where they didn't. I I think it's happened for smaller ones.
Marc (16:27.777)
Yeah. Well, do you, do you want to, I'll take if you want, do you want to explain what a teach out means? Because that's what you're saying.
Gary Stocker (16:38.677)
Yeah, the teach out is when a college closes, when a college closes, or in this case eliminates the program, eliminates a major, the colleges foreclosures are obligated to have other colleges will teach out the students in the closed college. The same concept applies to majors. the college has to find so if Gary Stocker U quits accounting for little Johnny U, I have to have Mark Debore University lined up to teach to at least give little Johnny that opportunity.
Marc (17:03.564)
Yep.
Gary Stocker (17:03.799)
But the challenge if in in in in doing that is colleges really are not financially incentives to send c send those students from cut programs to Mark de Boer University. They want the revenue, but what happens in your faculty member and you find out that your accounting program is being cut? You ain't sticking around to see who turned the lights off. You're you're looking to move on. And so that program logically, and I don't have any data to support this, Mark, logically that program deteriorates in its final years, and little Johnny
Marc (17:20.896)
Yep.
Gary Stocker (17:33.739)
Little Johnny doesn't get the benefit of a strong accounting background because it was a low normal program to begin with.
Marc (17:38.687)
Yeah. So now is it fair to say, and you tell me what the data shows when a, when a major closes, does that impact for the school, for the greater school, does that impact the research grants they might get, federal grants, state grants, basically saying, I am a, I'm making this up, a graphic design major, but my, Gary Stocker university closed down accounting.
Will that impact my college experience because of something outside of the realm of control?
Gary Stocker (18:14.091)
Best educated opinion, it will diminish the college's overall capacity to provide programs. They're bringing in less revenue with effectively the same cost base cost basis. And so to answer your question, yes, it's very difficult to prove that, but logically it makes sense, Mark.
Marc (18:33.824)
Yeah. think the other thing too is what a lot of people don't talk about when schools close majors is the reputational risk as well. Is that now I'm the graphic design major going on my interview, doing my plain old normal thing, going to go design whatever I design. And then the interviewer goes, Hey, I actually heard at Gary soccer university. Oh, why have you heard of it? Aren't they closing a lot of programs over there? Yeah. But not mine though. Mine's doing great though. Mine's flourishing.
Gary Stocker (18:57.346)
Right.
Marc (19:03.539)
And now the interviewer has a different jaded opinion about Gary Soccer University.
Gary Stocker (19:08.651)
Yeah, and the same thing with, I'm trying to think of an example, a car dealership. You know, if a car dealership sends out too many lemons and doesn't fix them, the market is going to generally acknowledge that there are lemons at this car dealership. And like I guess I can hold that logic for colleges or lemon degrees at lemon majors at this college because they're eliminating them. Yeah, reputational risk is real.
Marc (19:13.588)
Yeah.
Marc (19:22.194)
Yeah.
Marc (19:30.936)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (19:31.042)
difficult to make a connection that one causes the other. But that's why it goes back to the research. And Mark, you heard me use before the housing inspection. You and I have built houses in our adult lives and we always have them inspected. We always have them inspected. When we buy cars, you mentioned you look at our cars. We have our cars inspected.
Marc (19:45.725)
Yep.
Gary Stocker (19:47.284)
We have lots of things inspective, but we don't traditionally inspect the colleges outside of walking up and down their sidewalks, noting the green trees, the green leaves in the trees, and the change in color of leaves in the fall and the football noise on on football Saturdays. We need to move more to inspect the college, not just for finances, not just for graduation rates, but for things like majors, because it's the college may survive.
Your major may not. And that's that's just as traumatic for the individual who loses that accounting opportunity to use your example, that anybody that that would be for for the entire college closing. So Mark, when when we talk about, you know, all the the perspectives that we offer, and this one was probably one that a lot of folks haven't thought through. and whether your child or you have started college
Marc (20:15.113)
Yeah.
Yep.
Marc (20:22.909)
Ush
Gary Stocker (20:35.403)
Start a college or start the college decision making process. Go to college viability, click on products and grab that $29 app that will tell you $29 to make sure, to help ensure that the major you majors you're looking at have at least a decent volume that's likely to survive the four years or five years or six years that yourself or your child goes to college. So, Mark, let's call it a wrap for this episode of the Kitchen Table College Chats.
Marc (20:39.261)
you
Marc (20:56.076)
Yeah.
Gary Stocker (21:03.943)
And as I've promised many times before, we're gonna go live stream. we've started getting questions from from listeners now. We want to add your live questions, your live comments, your live concerns, and we will be doing that as soon as Mark and I can figure out the logistics to get that going. So keep sending your questions. Send them to me, Gary, G-A-R-Y at college viability. That's one really long word. Gary at college viability.com. I'll make sure to add them to the list of topics, list of questions that we talk about. And next week, Mark.
Marc (21:20.748)
Okay.
Gary Stocker (21:32.651)
Here's the theme right before the fourth of July, some fireworks, how tuition discounting works, and why it's a warning sign. And Mark, we should have two or three hours. Two or three hours on that one, not twenty twenty or thirty minutes. So Mark So so Mark, you know, I did the really long and dru in introduction and I know it was unfair and and I'll probably go to hell for that. But I'm gonna give you the chance to to take us out.
Marc (21:38.267)
We should book a little bit longer
Marc (22:01.077)
Wow. Well, thank you. You know, look, it has been fantastic and I think it was a good topic. I think one of the things to really talk about is again, asking the right question about when you go into this college, you know, really understanding what their major is, what's their faculty, how many people are they graduating? Ask the professors, ask the Dean and then ask the admissions counselor. However, from
Mark DeBoer and Gary Stocker. This was Kitchen Table College Chat. I appreciate all of you attending and we will see you next week.