Imagine a university just like Stanford. This university boasts a prestigious faculty, which includes 10 Nobel Laureates, and has held an average rank of 2.7 over the past 9 years in the U.S. News College Rankings. Its alumni include four of nine seats on the Supreme Court. And, this university is making big investments in new buildings, like a 94,000 square foot space for biological sciences. The school does not mandate a Eurocentric curriculum and even asks students to fulfill a gender studies requirement. Of course, this description is not a fiction; it is one of Stanford in 1994.
The campus experience of yesteryear sounds identical to the experience today, with two key differences — tuition and the number of non-teaching employees. The total cost of 1994 attendance (tuition + room & board + mandatory fees) in 2017 dollars was $42,231. Today, tuition is $22,000 higher. Would students rather spend four years at 2018 Stanford, or four years at 1994 Stanford and receive $92,000 in cash? Here is the total cost of attendance and the number of non-teaching employees over the past three decades: