Pricing UVA Out of the Competition
During the December board meeting, The Jefferson Council (TJC) co-founder and current UVA BOV member Bert Ellis announced that he would not approve the $525 million in requested capital projects under consideration for approval ($315MM arts center, $160MM student housing, $50MM parking garage) as well as any future project requests until the university administration significantly cut “duplicative and counterproductive” administrative expenses. Bert stated that the majority of these expense reductions must be directly applied toward lowering tuition costs which have spiraled out of control due to the lack of prudent financial oversight by the BOV. Here is brief ninety-second video that we shared of Bert from December’s BOV meeting stating this:
TJC has been relentlessly sending corroborative data that show UVA’s comparatively high tuition costs, both in the fall of 2023 when the BOV approved yet another tuition increase as well as this past June in anticipation of the inevitable request for an increase yet again in the fall of 2024. The chart below that I sent to President Ryan, Provost Baucom, Rector Hardie, and every BOV member comparing UVA to its some of its top 50 peer group competitors clearly shows how bad the problem is at UVA.
UNDERGRADUATE COST OF ATTENDANCE FOR THE 2024-2025 ACADEMIC YEAR:
NOTE: Per the UVA Admissions website, “cost of attendance” is defined as including the following categories — Tuition, Housing, Food, Books/Course Materials/Supplies, and Personal Expenses. These category criteria are consistent across all the universities listed above. The expense totals are derived directly from each respective university’s website.
UVA is forty percent more expensive than the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill which is now ranked higher than we are, eighty-five percent than Florida which is ranked twenty-eight vs. our twenty-four, and sixty-nine percent more than UGA. These are the three Southern state universities in the US News and World Report rankings that are now garnering many of the top-drawer out-of-state students who formerly would have attended UVA but whose parents cannot afford the price tag, which as you see is even higher than Princeton and Harvard. I had a four-decade career in corporate finance and can tell you this is a case study for a failed business model. You don’t “beat the competition” by pricing your product above your peer competitors…if you want to stay in business.
The Ryan administration proudly touts the millions of dollars in financial aid that is handed out annually. Here’s the problem: “Access UVA” financial scholarships only go to students from families with income under $100,000 . You don’t need an MBA or PHD in Economics to understand that families with incomes under a minimum of $225,000 could not possibly save enough money or pay out of current disposable income the $80,000-$90,000 annual price tag of an undergraduate UVA education, depending upon which division you attend.
The top five percent of American families earn $335,891 and above. Is that what we want at UVA, the upper five percent of American families while ignoring the true middle class who get no financial aid? President Ryan, where is your passion for economic diversity at UVA?
Therefore, the UVA economic model takes care of the poor and lower middle class but almost completely ignores the “true” middle class who is faced with three options:
Deplete your lifetime savings to attend UVA.
Take out an unsustainable level of student loans, burdening your child with an enormous amount of debt upon graduation, crippling their financial independence
Attend another university that offers a quality education at a much lower cost.
Option three is happening right now and will continue unabated unless the BOV listens to Bert Ellis and cuts administrative overhead with a blowtorch, applies the expense savings to tuition reductions, and stops spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually on capital projects UVA can no longer afford.
The Jefferson Council fully supports Bert Ellis and his initiative. We implore the BOV to listen and inject some sanity into the budgeting process. Bert has requested that the Ryan Administration submit his requested cost savings before the next March board meeting. We will see if President Ryan complies or just ignores the request, hoping for the continued acquiescence of a compliant board. That has historically been the case. TJC emphatically believes those days must be over once and for all. We need an independent BOV that represents the interests of parents and alumni, not the whims of an administration that has an unsustainable philosophical agenda at odds with a quality, remotely affordable education.
If you agree with us, please email President Ryan, Provost Baucom, and the BOV. The email links are below:
President Jim Ryan: jer6p@virginia.edu.
Provost Ian Baucom: pkk4c@virginia.edu.
Emails to the UVA BOV: Send your email to Susan Harris, BOV Secretary, and ask her to forward to the entire board: sgh4c@virginia.edu.
We also ask that you donate to TJC as we continue our battle to restore Mr. Jefferson’s University to its founding principles. One of his core philosophical tenets was that UVA should provide a quality education for the “common people” not just the economic and social elite:
Thank you for your continued support.
Thomas M. Neale
University of Virginia Class of 1974
The Jefferson Council
President Emeritus and Co-Founder
